
appletons' home 
*t\ i^ading books 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ChapuiQSlCopyright No... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERSCA. 



appletons' Ibome IReabing Boofi0 

EDITED BY 
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL. D. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 



DIVISION I 

Natural History 



CHART I. 




Arcellae — Fairy Shrimp. 



APPLETONS' HOME READING BOOKS 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU 



OR, LIFE IN THE STILL WATERS 



BY 

CLARA KERN BAYLISS 



He liveth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small 




%%'\'^' 



,4 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1897 



, 'O «J«-^ 



Copyright, 1897, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 




INTEODUCTION TO THE HOME EEADING 
BOOK SEEIES BY THE EDITOE. 



The new education takes two important direc- 
tions — one of these is toward original observation, 
requiring the pupil to test and yerify what is taught 
him at school by his own experiments. The infor- 
mation that he learns from books or hears from his 
teacher's lips must be assimilated by incorporating it 
with his own experience. 

The other direction pointed out by the new edu- 
cation is systematic home reading. It forms a part of 
school extension of all kinds. The so-called " XJniver- 
sity Extension " that originated at Cambridge and Ox- 
ford has as its chief feature the aid of home reading by 
lectures and round-table discussions, led or conducted 
by experts who also lay out th-e course of reading. 
The Chautauquan movement in this country prescribes 
a series of excellent books and furnishes for a goodly 
number of its readers annual courses of lectures. The 
teachers' reading circles that exist in many States pre- 
scribe the books to be read, and publish some analysis, 
commentary, or catechism to aid the members. 

Home reading, it seems, furnishes the essential 
basis of this great movement to extend education 



vi EDITOR'S INTEODUCTION. 

beyond the school and to make self-cultnre a habit 
of life. 

Looking more carefully at the difference between 
the two directions of the new education we can see 
what each accomplishes. There is first an effort to 
train the original powers of the individual and make 
him self -active, quick at observation, and free in his 
thinking. Is^ext, the new education endeavors, by the 
reading of books and the study of the wisdom of the 
race, to make the child or youth a participator in the 
results of experience of all mankind. 

These two movements may be made antagonistic 
by poor teaching. The book knowledge, containing as 
it does the precious lesson of human experience, may 
be so taught as to bring with it only dead rules of 
conduct, only dead scraps of information, and no 
stimulant to original thinking. Its contents may be 
memorized without being understood. On the other 
hand, the self -activity of the child may be stimulated 
at the expense of his social well-being — his originality 
may be cultivated at the expense of his rationality. 
If he is taught persistently to have his own way, to 
trust only his own senses, to cling to his own opinions 
heedless of the experience of his fellows, he is pre- 
paring for an unsuccessful, misanthropic career, and 
is likeJy enough to end his life in a madhouse. 

It is admitted that a too exclusive study of the 
knowledge found in books, the knowledge which is 
aggregated from the experience and thought of other 
people, may result in loading the mind of the pupil 
with material which he can not use to advantage. 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. vii 

Some minds are so full of lumber that there is no 
space left to set up a workshop. The necessity of 
uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity 
in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not, 
in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is 
the oral instruction in school and the personal influ- 
ence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to ac- 
tivity. Book instruction is not always dry and theo- 
retical. The very persons who declaim against the 
book, and praise in such strong terms the self -activity 
of the pupil and original research, are mostly persons 
who have received their practical impulse from read- 
ing the writings of educational reformers. Very few 
persons have received an impulse from personal con- 
tact with inspiring teachers compared with the num- 
ber that have received an impulse from such books as 
Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, Rousseau's 
Emile, Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Francis 
W. Parker's Talks about Teaching, G. Stanley 
Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connec- 
tion, too, of the impulse to observation in natural sci- 
ence produced by such books as those of Hugh Miller, 
Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and Darwin. 

The new scientific book is different from the old. 
The old style book of science gave dead results where 
the new one gives not only the results, but a minute 
account of the method employed in reaching those re- 
sults. An insight into the method employed in dis- 
covery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, 
a sociologist. The books of "the writers above named 
have done more to stimulate original research on the 



yiii EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. 

part of their readers than all other influences com- 
bined. 

It is therefore much more a matter of importance 
to get the right kind of book than to get a living 
teacher. The book which teaches results, and at the 
same time gives in an intelligible manner the steps of 
discovery and the methods employed, is a book 
which will stimulate the student to repeat the ex- 
periments described and get beyond these into fields 
of original research himseK. Every one remem- 
bers the published lectures of Faraday on chemistry, 
which exercised a wide influence in changing the style 
of books on natural science, causing them to deal 
with method more than results, and thus to train 
the reader's power of conducting original research. 
Robinson Crusoe for nearly two hundred years has 
stimulated adventure and prompted young men to 
resort to the border lands of civilization. A library 
of home reading should contain books that stimulate 
to self -activity and arouse the spirit of inquiry. The 
books should treat of methods of discovery and evo- 
lution. All nature is unified by the discovery of 
the law of evolution. Each and every being in the 
world is now explained by the process of development 
to which it belongs. Every fact now throws light on 
all the others by illustrating the process of growth in 
which each has its end and aim. 

The Home Reading Books are to be classed as 
follows : 

First Division, Natural history, including popular 
scientific treatises on plants and animals, and also de- 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. ix 

scriptions of geographical localities. The branch of 
study in the district school course wliich corresponds 
to this is geography. Travels and sojourns in distant 
lands ; special writings which treat of this or that 
animal or plant, or family of animals or plants ; any- 
thing that relates to organic nature or to meteorol- 
ogy, or descriptive astronomy may be placed in this 
class. 

Second Division. Whatever relates to physics or 
natural philosophy, to the statics or dynamics of air or 
water or hght or electricity, or to the properties of 
matter ; whatever relates to chemistry, either organic 
or inorganic — books on these subjects belong to the 
class that relates to what is inorganic. Even the so- 
called organic chemistry relates to the analysis of 
organic bodies into their inorganic compounds. 

Third Division, History and biography and eth- 
nology. Books relating to the lives of individuals, and 
especially to the social life of the nation, and to the 
collisions of nations in war, as well as to the aid that 
one gives to another through commerce in times of 
peace; books on ethnology relating to the manners 
and customs of savage or civilized peoples ; books on 
the primitive manners and customs which belong to 
the earliest human beings — ^books on these subjects be- 
long to the third class, relating particularly to the hu- 
man will, not merely the individual will but the social 
will, the will of the tribe or nation ; and to this third 
class belong also books on ethics and morals, and on 
forms of government and laws, and what is included 
under the term civics or the duties of citizenship. 



X EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. 

Fourth Division, The fourth class of books in- 
cludes more especially literature and works that make 
known the beautiful in such departments as sculpture, 
painting, architecture and music. Literature and art 
show human nature in the form of feelings, emotions, 
and aspirations, and they show how these feelings 
lead over to deeds and to clear thoughts. This de- 
partment of books is perhaps more important than 
any other in our home reading, inasmuch as it teaches 
a knowledge of human nature and enables us to un- 
derstand the motives that lead our fellow-men to 
action. 

To each book is added an analysis in order to aid 
the reader in separating the essential points from the 
unessential, and give each its proper share of atten- 
tion. 

W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, November 16, 1896. 



PEEF ACE. 



Iisr tlie study of animals, children are com- 
pelled to begin in the midst of things, and 
thus they never come to appreciate the signifi- 
cance of the various phases in the development 
of life, for the reason that nearly all the works 
on zoology dismiss the Protozoans and other 
microscopic animals either with the briefest 
mention or with no mention at all. 

Yet it is here that we must look for the 
very sources of things, without some idea of 
which no one can apprehend the gradual evolu- 
tion of life in its higher forms nor appreciate 
any living thing at its true value. 

It is hoped that this little book may aid 
the child in beginning at the beginning, and 
obtaining a connected view of the relations of 
the facts that he will acquire as he advances in 
the studv of animal life. 



xii IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

The plates have been prepared to represent 
not merely the organs but also the actions of 
these animals, so as to render a microscope un- 
necessary, although the use of one would add 
to the interest of the study. 

The author might claim, with truth, to 
have written this little volume for the purpose 
of enriching the child's life by teaching him 
how much more interesting the world is than 
it ordinarily seems ; and this is one object of 
the book; but, to be honest, the real reason 
for the writing of the book was to please her- 
self, and because she is fond of these micro- 
scopic creatures, and would have the boys and 

girls enjoy them with her. 

C. K. B. 

Chicago, February, 1897, 



AUTHOE'S INTEODUCTIOK 



Things known to us are divided into four great king- 
doms — the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the 
spiritual. In the mineral kingdom there is popularly- 
supposed to be no life. The mineral grows by accretion, 
by adding like particles to the outside. It has no power to 
create new substances. Plants and animals grow by as- 
similation, by eating and digesting food, by taking par- 
ticles of matter and transforming them into entirely new 
substances, and depositing them on the inside. Because 
they have this power to create new forms of matter, they 
are said to be alive. 

The lower forms of animals are almost indistinguish- 
able from plant forms, yet there is a wide difference be- 
tween the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The very 
name animal, from animus, mind, shows that the possess- 
or is allied to the spiritual kingdom. The lowest ani- 
mal has what the plant has not — volition or power of 
choosing, if it be only the choice of moving or remaining 
at rest. 

In this book we have considered a low order of unicel- 
lular plants, the Desmids and Diatoms, which may be 
said to have been caught in the act of turning into 
animals ; yet even here we have found phenomena of 
marvelous interest and prophecies of greater things to 
come. 

We have studied the lower animals, single-celled Pro- 
tozoans, closely allied to plants, almost wholly undifPer- 



xiv IN BKOOK A]S"D BAYOU. 

entiated in organs or functions, reproducing by spores as 
the lower plants do, or by cutting olf a piece of theni- 
selves as plants propagate from slips. We have gone on 
through the Protozoans, finding matter differentiated into 
muscle, as in the Vorticella ; into eyespots, as in the Eu- 
glena; into cilia, into oesophagus, and even into the per- 
manent legs of the Euplotes — and all this in simple, one- 
celled animals. 

Higher in the scale of being we find the multicellular 
worms and Hydrce, the latter with their cells arranged in 
two layers forming a hollow digestive tube, but still so 
undifferentiated in function that the two layers can read- 
ily exchange work and location. The animals still propa- 
gate by slips ; yet here, in some instances, begins the pro- 
duction of offspring by eggs, corresponding to the pro- 
pagation by seed in the Phcenogams or higher plants. 
Next we find in the Rotifers a distiuct reproduction 
by egg ; a differentiation of matter into mastax, eye, and 
even brain, as well as into sex. In Crustaceans we 
have highly specialized animals, with a great number 
of organs, as gills, legs, antennae, eyes, hearts, and mouth 
parts. 

In the Brack tonus, redoubling its energy at the pros- 
pect of food, we have an indication of mind ; in the 
Canthocamptiis blaming its companion and retaliat- 
ing — is it going too far to say we have psychological 
phenomena — one mind estimating what is in another ? 
and that here we catch a glimpse of the spiritual king- 
dom ? At any rate, when you go a step further and 
note the hostile attitude of the crayfish, the bee, or the 
wasp, the moment you appear upon the scene, it will no 
longer be possible to doubt that you are observing con- 
duct dictated by an intelligence which is dimly self-con- 
scious, and which recognizes intelligence and purpose 
in you. 

In this study, as in all your zoological studies, you will 
notice : 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. XV 

1. That in the beginning, organs as well as animals are 
much alike; that ditt'erentiation or evolution starts in 
protoplasm and works up from the general to the special ; 
that organs of locomotion, sight, respiration, circulation, 
etc., have not been made ''out of hand," but have grown 
by use, as intellectual faculties do. 

2. That there are in the earliest living things incipient 
prophecies of organs and faculties to come, and that few, 
if any, of the prophecies are yet wholly fulfilled even in 
man ; for instance, there is promise in the Diatom of a 
unison and harmony of action to which man has not at- 
tained, and of a mode of locomotion which he has not 
perfected. 

3. That in addition to the development of physical 
function there is a slow but continuous progress in men- 
tal function or intelligence. 

4. When the latter reaches the point manifested in hu- 
man kind, notice the hints of how man takes up and car- 
ries forward Nature's work, making new pseudopods, eyes, 
etc., for himself ; and reflect upon what bearing this has 
on the proposition that man is Nature's fijial effort in the 
animal line. 

This volume treats of but a limited number of the 
aquatic objects, and there are other fields of research 
which will be found of absorbing interest. In botany, 
entomology, crystallography, embryology, and many 
other departments of science, the microscope is invaluable, 
and its revelations are an unfailing source of surprise and 
profit. But the isolated facts to be gathered in this way 
are comparatively valueless unless their relation to other 
facts, their place in the continuity of facts, is understood. 
In other words, it may be of interest to know that an ani- 
mal has a certain kind of eye or heart, but it is of vastly 
more interest to know what o'clock that indicates in the 
gradual evolution of eyes and hearts; for evolution is, 
after all, the paramountly significant and inspiring truth 
which science teaches. 



xvi IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

Bibliography. — For the beginner in the study of zool- 
ogy, such works as Stokes's Microscopy for Beginners^ 
the method of observation exemplified in Colton's Zool- 
ogy and Huxley's The Crayfish, and the classification of 
Crustacea and Protozoa in the Encyclopcedia Britan- 
7iica, will be found very helpful. For those more ad- 
vanced, we recommend Kent's Manual of Infusoria, 
Bronn's Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs, and the 
various works on comparative anatomy. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— Ehizopods 1 

II.— The whiplashers 27 

III.— CiLIATA 37 

lY.— Protozoan philosophy 81 

V. — Wheel bearers . . . . . .91 

YI.— Crustaceans 115 

YII.— The hungry glove* 139 

YIII. — "Plants at the moment of becoming 

animals" .148 

IX.— WiGGLERS AND MINUET DANCERS . . .159 

X. — Taking vacations 164 

XI.— The greatest joke of all . . . .167 
Pronouncing glossary 177 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FIGURE PAGE 

1. — An Amoeba: a, pulsating vacuole ; &, nucleus . . 2 

2.— Walking 4 

3. — Twenty minutes for dinner : c, food particles . , 5 

4. — Multiplication by division ,11 

5. — 1, Arcella acuminata; 2, arcella vulgaris; 3, arcella 

dentata 14 

6. — 1, Pulsating vacuole ; 2, food in food- vacuole . . 20 

7. — Clathrulina elegans 24 

8. — Various stages in the development of Eiiglena viridis : 
a, red eye spot ; &, pulsating vacuole ; c, nucleus ; 7, 

preparing to form spores 28 

9.— Dallingeria 33' 

10. — Dallingeria and family 35 

11. — Vorticella nebulifera, showing development of individ- 
ual stages A to F (e and F free) .... 40 
12. — Bell animalcule : a, ciliated disk ; h, rim or lip ; d, oesoph- 
agus ; e, funnel ; /, food ; pv, pulsating vacuole . 41 
13. — VorticellcB : Dividing, budding, coiling, uncoiling, and 

free 43 

14. — Animated calla-lilies 46 

15.— Vorticellae 50 

16. — Ocean-steamer line 52 

17. — 1, Cothuryiia ; 2, 3, 4, Vagi7iicolce 53 

18. — 1, Pyxicola ; 2, Thuricola . . . . . .57 

19. — Colony of stentors 60 

20. — Parammcium : a, vacuole distributing secretion ; b, vac- 
uole filling; c, nucleus; cZ, oesophagus ; e, funnel; 
/, food balls ; g, temporary anus . . . .63 

21. — Conjugation 67 

22.— Trachelocerca . .70 

xix 



XX IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

FIGURE PAGE 

23. — Amphileptus 74 

24. — \, Euplotes harpa ; 2, Uuplotes charon .... 78 

25. — Floscularia cornuta (magnified) 89 

26. — 1, Pterodina ; 2, a one-legged pedestrian ... 92 

27.— Wheel of tube wheel 93 

28.— Two-lipped tube wheel 93 

29. — Tripod wheel bearer 97 

80. — Tube wheels : 1, retracted ; e, Qgg 98 

81. — Skeleton wheel bearer 99 

82. — Stephanocet^os eichoimii (magnified) .... 101 

83. — 1, Rotifer vulgaris; 2, same walking; 8, young one . 102 

84. — Brachionus 104 

85. — Mouth of Brachionus . 104 

86.— Sword bearer 109 

87. — Baphnia pulex e .119 

88. — Canthocamptus 128 

89. — Cyclops quadricornis : a, young 183 

40.— Hydr« 142 

41. — Hydra attacking a water flea 146 

42. — Besmids ; ^, Closterium 149 

48. — Orthosira Bressceri 151 

44. — Nitzschia vivax 151 

45. — Pinnularia major 152 

46. — Stauroneis Fhmnicenteron 152 

47. — JSfavicula didyma . . . . . . . . 153 

48. — Fleurosigma formosum 153 

49. — Bacillaria paradoxa 156 

50. — Strephuris . 160 

51. — Anlophorus 162 

52. — 1 and 6, Zoea of shore crab; 2, TriJiema; 8, Cerco- 
monas; 4, Stauridia ; 5, Zoea of Stomapod ; 7, 

Lepas 165 

FULL-PAGE CHARTS, ^^^^^^ 

PAGE 

I. — Arcell^ — Fairy Shrijip . . . Frontispiece 

II. — Vaginicola 55 

III. — Matinee by the Merry Coleps Company ... 75 

IV.— Hydra 189 



DIATOMACE^. 
PROTOZOANS. 

Oymnomixa. 
T ^T.^r,. S Amoeba. 

Hft tozoa \ Actinophrys. 

MELIOZOA I Clathmlina. 



Corticata, 

Flagellata — Euglena. 

Rhyncho-flagellata. — Noctiluca. 
r Peritricha . 



CiLIATA . 



I Vorticella. 
( Vaginicolinae. 

Heterotricha. — Stentor. 

f Paramcecium. 

Holotricha.. J Trachelocerca. 
I Amphileptus. 
( Coleps. 



Hypotricha. 



S Chilodon. 
( Euplotes. 



METAZOANS. 



Vermes, 
rotifera. 



Crustaceans. 



ACALEPHS . 



f Cypris. 

Lophyropod. ] "^itZo.m^ius. 
t Diaptomus. 

-Hydroids. 
xxii 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



CHAPTER I. 

EHIZOPODS. 
THE SLOWEST THING ON EAETH. 

Akyoke who makes good use of Ms eyes 
knows that there is a multitude of things to be 
seen everywhere which escape the attention of 
the careless observer. There are beautiful 
tints on the flowers, odd shapes among the 
leaves, curious rocks that look like and are 
petrified animals, wonderful insects, and many 
other interesting things which he could easily 
pass unheeded. 

But the keenest-eyed person might stand 
by a wayside pool without ever guessing what 
a host of queer people inhabit it. There are 
more colors and kinds of people in a little 
stagnant pond than are to be found in all the 
countries you read about in your geographies. 



2 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

You do not see them because most of them 
are so modest and shy that they never allow 
mortal eye to look upon them except through 
a powerful magnifying glass. 

They are well worth the trouble of seek- 
ing, for they are a strange sort of folk when 










Fig. 1. — An Amoeba : a, pulsating vacuole ; b, nucleus. 

you find them, some of them having neither 
eyes, ears, mouths, hands, nor feet, and yet 
managing to live very comfortably. 

I want to tell you about one of these head- 
less races of the pool known as the 

Amoeba Family. 

The first curious thing about them is that 
they are all ladies. There isn't a man or boy 
among them. 



RHIZOPODS. 3 

They are very domestic and seldom travel 
abroad. The smallest pond is an immense 
world to them, and has many unexplored re- 
gions like those on your maps around the north 
and south poles. 

And jet, as you become acquainted with 
them, you will find these ladies very entertain- 
ing company. If you dip one up in a drop of 
water and put lier under your microscope, you 
will be quite fascinated with her; yet all 
you'll see will be something resembling a tiny 
spatter of water with a few colored specks in 
it. But it is alive, and that is why it fasci- 
nates you. 

Amoebae are made of protoplasm, a jelly- 
like substance not unlike the white of an e^g. 
Yet they can move and eat and breathe and 
rear children, all after a fashion of their own. 

You may see them do all these things with 
your microscope. 

They have wills of their own, too. And 
that is the whole secret of their eating and 
walking without mouths or feet. 

That, I suspect, is the whole secret of being 
an animal at all, instead of a plant or a rock — 
to will or want to do things. 

So, w^hen an amoeba wants to take a morn- 
ing walk, it uses its will power to thrust out a 



4 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

loop or ]3rong of its outer covering, and then 
the granular part of its body flows into it. 

Did you ever before hear of a creature that 
walked by flowing ? 

When it wishes to take another step, it 
pushes out another loop and flows into that. 




Fig. 2.— Walking. 

But the amoeba is slower than time — a great 
deal slower ! 

If you wish to see how much our mode 
of travel resembles theirs, just watch a baby 
creeping. Or go up into one of those large 
city buildings which have an open court in the 
center, like the Chamber of Commerce or the 
Masonic Temple in Chicago, and look down 
over the railing from the upper story upon the 
people crossing the court on the ground floor. 



RHIZOPODS. 5 

They do not look in the least like men. They 
have no height. They look like black or gray 
knobs, and their legs seem to be nothing but 
horizontal protuberances stretching forward at 
the front and withdrawing at the rear. 

Try it some time. It will make you laugh 
to see what a queer object a walking man is 
when viewed perpendicularly ; and that is the 
way in which you look at the amoeba. 

But you must remember that there is this 
difference between a man's walk and an 




Fig. 3. — Twenty minutes for dinner : c, food particles. 

amoeba's — the man's is very much swifter. It 
would take an amoeba a week to cross the 
court, small as it is. 



6 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

The feet whicli the amoeba makes when it 
wishes to travel are called jpseudopodia^ or 
^^ make-believe feet/' because they are not real 
feet and do not remain when made^ but become 
part of the body again^ and will perhaps be 
make-believe arms to grasp something the next 
time they are thrust out. 

Possibly you have heard people in a rail- 
way carriage, if they are addicted to slang, 
say, " Let's go out and throw ourselves 
around some food/' when the conductor called 
"Twenty minutes for dinner." 

That is what the Amoebae do. They throw 
themselves around their food. Only these 
leisurely ladies take their time to it. 

As they have no mouths into which to put 
their food, they manage in this way: When 
they come in contact with a particle of nutri- 
ment, they make arms to take it, in the same 
way that they made feet, by bulging out a 
loop of their clear outer margin and flowing 
into it. In this manner they flow around their 
food, or throw themselves around it, and wrap 
it up within them. 

No doubt they are delighted whenever 
they secure a morsel. I once knew a little 
boy, just learning to feed himself, who took 
his tiny fork and speared after the morsels on 



RHIZOPODS. 7 

his plate, and eacli time he captured one he 
laughed and exulted, holding it up and call- 
ing on all those at the table to rejoice with 
him over his achievement. He gloated over 
each mouthful before he ate it. 

And in their demure way the amoebae exult 
over every particle of food they find, and con- 
sider it a delicious tidbit, though it really is 
only a bit of slimy moss or ooze from the bot- 
tom of the pond. But they like it, growing 
and thriving upon it. 

They can not digest it as you do your food, 
for they have no stomachs except such as they 
make on demand; but they absorb it as you 
do the medicines you put on the outside to 
cure an aching head or a sore throat. 

When they have extracted all the nourish- 
ment from the moss, they eject the refuse from 
any part of their bodies, or, to describe the 
operation more accurately, they roll themselves 
away from it. 

If you watch an amoeba, you will see a 
small bubble or opening coming in the granular 
part of its body. This enlarges until, through 
the microscope, it looks almost large enough 
to admit the top of your pencil. Then it 
closes slowly, though in much less time than 
was required for its coming. 



8 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

This bubble comes and goes with great 
regularity. It is called a pulsating vacuole, or 
^^ beating emptiness," and is the nearest ap- 
proach to a heart which the amoeba has. 

One morning a company of Amoebae were 
holding a festival near the edge of the pond. 

They were gathered about the roots of a 
tree whicli stood partly in the water. It 
was raining, and they were unusually happy, 
for the waters w^ere roiled, and many particles 
of food came floating up to be wrapped in 
their embraces. They had not been as well 
fed nor as jolly for a long time. The summer 
had been so hot and the temperature had so 
often risen to one hundred degrees that they 
had been ^^heat-stiffened" most of the time 
and unable to get about or to eat or to enjoy 
life; for extreme heat as well as extreme cold 
renders an amoeba stiff and apparently dead. 

But now the sun was overcast by clouds, 
the cool rain was falling, and the ladies in the 
water had quite recovered their health and 
spirits, and were very merry for such sedate 
people as they. 

But suddenly a flash of lightning came 
down the tree, splashing the water at its 
roots into the air. And every Amoeba within 



RIIIZOPODS. 9 

ten feet of the tree was rolled into a ball and 
lay motionless as in death. The water seemed 
to be full of corpses. 

Those nearest the tree were indeed corpses 
and never wakened more. But those farther 
away, who had not received so strong a charge 
of electricity, remained in a trance for awhile, 
then slowly revived and unrolled themselves, 
and after a time began to move and eat once 
more. 

When the Amoebse came to life and found 
that some of their companions were dead, they 
felt very sad. They did not weep. How could 
they, when they had no eyes from which the 
tears could fall, and no hands to hold their 
pocket-handkerchiefs ? 

But they were lonesome, and wanted more 
Amoebae to take the places of those who were 
dead. 

Some said it was too soon to think of filling 
the vacant chairs. But others disapproved of 
delay, and suggested that there might be im- 
proved modern methods for replacing their 
loss. 

^' Now I've heard," said one bright Amoeba 
lady, " that there are strange folk in foreign 
lands who have fathers and mothers and whole 
shoals of children in their families. The Snail, 



10 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

who is a great traveler, a regular Wandering 
Jew of a fellow, and who has circumnavigated 
the Bayou and has gone far out beyond our 
world to a distant country known as ^The 
River/ says that in that country are barbarous 
heathen people, called Fishes, who have fami- 
lies of that sort, with menfolk at the head of 
them. 

" But he says, too, that these Fishes have 
eyes, mouths, fins, gills, scales, and a great 
many other useless things with which we are 
not burdened. 

" So, as we are not like them, it might be 
a risky experiment for us to try to imitate 
them in our family matters." 

Another said : " The Bible ^ tells us that 
when the Creator wanted inhabitants on earth, 
he split a one-stemmed rhubarb stalk down the 
middle and it became two people. 

^^That was the Creator's way, and it has 
always been our way, and I think we'd better 
abide by the traditions of the past and not try 
newfangled methods." 

So they ate and grew and expanded their 
bodies till there came a second nucleus and a 
second " beating nothingness." 

* The Amoeba? read the Zend-Avesta, the Parsee Bible. 



RHIZOPODS. 11 

Then, on opposite edges of the body be- 
tween the two nuclei, there came two indenta- 
tions which deepened and deepened until they 
met in the middle. And behold ! there were 
two creatures instead of one. 

Every time an amoeba divides into two^ 
both new beings are born into new life^ and 








J 



Fig. 4. — Multiplication by division. 



there is no waste or dead body to leave be- 
hind. 

When these two divide again, there are 
four new and perfect animals. 

And this is how^ it comes to pass that the 
Amoebae have done a thing which neither fish 
nor fowl nor man has ever succeeded in doing, 
though many of the latter have tried. 

Ponce de Leon came to America in the 
early days after its discovery and hunted all 
up and down the forests and along the rivers 



12 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

for a Fountain of Youth wMcli was said to pre- 
vent men from growing old. 

Many alchemists have spent their lives try- 
ing to make an Elixir of Life which should 
ward off death and keep people forever vigor- 
ous and young. No man has ever found just 
this thing. (I will tell you some day how 
near he has come to it.) But the very first 
Amoeba that ever lived drank at the fountain 
and partook of the elixir which keeps the 
Amoebae from age and death. 

TMs is one of the most remarkable things 
about these wonderful little beings — that they 
and their cousins, the Paramoecii, the Bell ani- 
malcules, and all the one-celled Protozoans, 
never die. They may be killed or may die 
from accident, but there is no such thing as 
natural death among them. They are always 
cut off' in the prime of life, as men prefer to 
be who have a horror of being sick in bed or 
dying of feebleness and age. 

So they go on to this day, increasing their 
numbers by dividing through the middle ; and 
are always immortal, living forever, unless 
some dire disaster befalls them. 

By this way of making two out of one you 
will see that the people in the pond use a 



KHIZOPODS. 13 

different aritlimetic from yours. When they 
want to multiply^ they divide. Their arith- 
metic says : 

"When any thing or number is divided 
into two equal parts, each of the parts is called 
a whole one. Two halves equal two whole 



ones. 


2X4=2 1^2 = 2. 
2X1=4 2^2 = 4. 




And their algebra says : 






Let a? = 1 amoeba, 






and 2/ = i amoeba. 






Then a; + y = f = 3. 






a;-2/= i = 1. 






(a; + y) + (a? - •?/) = 3 + 1 = 


4. 


2a? 


= 4. So (2? = tioo instead of one 


amoeba, 


Oh, you would never get on in their algebra. 



But if you like these little creatures and 
want them always near you, I will tell you a 
secret if you'll never reveal it to any of the 
ladies who call upon me. 

When the ponds are frozen over, a vase of 
water in which nasturtium slips are growing is 
their favorite Winter Palace. 

You can put the vase in the drawing-room 
window and have beautiful flowers all winter, 



14 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



and people will admire your '^ lovely jardi- 
me7'e,'''' though they might be horrified if they 
suspected that it was a menagerie containing a 
dozen different kinds of living animals. 



II. 
UNDER A HAT. 

(Arcella.) 

Some of the missionaries who distributed 
clothing to the naked savages in the tropic 
countries tell us that the natives were not 
satisfied with their allotment of garments, so 




/ ' 3 

Fig. 5. — 1, Arcella acuminata ; 2, arcella vulgaris ; 3, arcella 
dentata. 

they traded among themselves, and when they 
came to services on the following day their 
appearance was most grotesque and astonish- 
ing. A woman would be attired in a man's 
shirtj or a stalwart man would stalk proudly in, 



RHIZOPODS. 15 

wearing, as his only article of apparel, a lady's 
bonnet. 

Now the Amoebae never wear clothing. But 
they have some near kinsmen, the Crown 
Amoebae, or Arcellae, who are much more aristo- 
cratic, the adults seldom appearing in public 
without a hat. 

This is their only garment, but it is large 
enough to cover the whole body when they 
retract their pseudopodia, or extemporized 
limbs, and remain at rest. 

They make their hats themselves by exud- 
ing from their bodies a chitinous substance, 
w^hich shapes itself into a shell so thin and 
transparent that the movements of the arcella 
may be seen through it. These shells or hats 
are flexible, and sometimes the arcella rolls 
the brim up or bends it down as girls do with 
the brims of their flats or sailor hats. 

When seen from above, these hats look like 
flat disks or plates, with delicate markings and 
tintings on them. There are browns and 
greens and yellows, from the darkest to the 
lightest. 

When these pretty shells lie at rest on the 
slide of your microscope, you may easily mis- 
take them for plants or dead matter; but when 
the tiny plate begins to crawl about, there is 



16 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

no mistaking tlie active will wMcli propels it. 
You know there is a live being underneath, 
even if you do not see the animal extending 
its pseudopodia beyond the shell, as you often 
may. 

A side view shows you the true shape of 
the shell, as in Chart I, Figs. 1 and 4. 

The arcella itself is exactly like the 
amoeba in appearance and habits. It walks, 
eats, and digests in the same way ; but it is 
distinguished by having a hat or house, by 
two or three nuclei, and by the manner of get- 
ting offspring. 

Instead of dividing into two, as the amoeba 
does, the arcella increases its family by what 
is known as '' bud fission "^ — that is, it puts 
forth pseudopods on which warts or buds ap- 
pear, and after a time it pinches them off, sev- 
eral at a time, so that it often has a family of 
nine children all of an age. Just think what 
a time there would be of it if they should all 
catch the measles or whooping-cough ! 

And these are real babies, not grown-up 
folks like the new-made Amoebae ; for the 
young Arcellse have to develop pulsating vacu- 
oles for themselves, and, like the children of 
all primitive people, they are allowed to go 
without clothing till they are old enough to 



RHIZOPODS. lY 

make it for themselves. Then they make 
their pretty hats and feel clothed and in their 
right minds, equipped for the business of life. 

There is another thing which distinguishes 
them from the Amoebae. The Amoebae can not 
swim nor float, but have to crawl on the mud 
at the bottom of the pool or on sticks and leaves. 
But the Arcellae have little bladders in which 
to secrete gas, and when the bladder is filled 
they can rise to the top or float in the water as 
an aeronaut does in the air with his balloon. 
When they wish to sink to the bottom they do 
as the man in the balloon does, they open a 
valve and let out the gas. 

Who w^ould have suspected that aw^ay 
down in the mud of the bayou we should find 
a prophecy of man's latest invention ? Or a 
little creature who has gone " up in a balloon, 
boys, up in a balloon " so many times and for 
so many ages that it is no marvel at all to him 
or to his fellows ? And they never think of 
taking their machine to country fairs and aston- 
ishing the natives with it. 

Nature has been working up the balloon 
trade for ages past, you see. 

There are three families of the Arcellae — 
the Acmminata, the Dentata^ and the Mitrata 
— and ^^ by their hats shall ye know them," for 



18 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

each family wears its own peculiar hat^ as tlie 
Scottish clans used to do. 

Only the Scotch called theirs bonnets, and 
made songs about them, and used them as 
other people do flags, to distinguish the armies 
when they go to battle. 

The Scots sang : 

" And it's ho I for the bonnets of bonny Dundee." 

The Arcellae sing : 

'' And it's ho I for the bonnets of bonny Dentatae." 

For the Arcellae are just as proud of their 
headdresses as the Scots were, and consider 
them a sort of coat of arms by which each in- 
dividual may proclaim to the world his title to 
a long line of distinguished ancestors. 

I think the Arcellae never go to war, 
but when they go abroad to display their 
clothes there is no doubt but the Accumi- 
natse think theii^s is the most stylish and be- 
coming hat ; and the Dentatae think theirs is ; 
and the Mitratae think tJieirs is ; else why 
should they persist in Avearing that particular \ 
kind and never changing to one of the other 
styles, since they have the making all in their 
own hands ? 

And it is no wonder they like their head- 
dresses, for they are very pretty, and the poor 



RHIZOPODS. 19 

creature looks so sorry and dejected when lie 
has outgro\Yn his hat and has to crawl out and 
lie around unclothed till he can make another 
(Chart I, Fig. 5) ! 



III. 

THE SUN ANIMALCULE. 

{Actinojjlirys sol.) 

If you blow soap bubbles from the end of 
a tube into the air, blowing carefully with fre- 
quent pauses, you may make, not a single bub- 
ble, but a ball of small bubbles. 

Now, if you can imagine that out from this 
globe of bubbles, radiating in all directions, are 
spines as colorless as the bubbles themselves, 
and that every moment or two a large bubble 
bursts and then forms itself again, you will 
know how the Actinophrys sol looks. 

It is called the sun animalcule because the 
rays from the ball make it look like the old 
pictures of the sun. 

You can find it in jouv jardiniere and every- 
where in fresh water, where other microscopic 
animals live, but its favorite residence is on 
sphagnum or bog moss. 



20 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



A large one is 



hr of an incli in diameter. 



65 



It is very quiet and well behaved. It has a 
gently gliding or floating motion, and moves in 




Fig. 6. — 1, Pulsating vacuole; 2, food in food-vacuole. 

a circular course when it moves at all. But it 
remains in one place for long periods of time. 

It can travel, but seldom does. It can eat, 
but seldom does. It can withdraw its rays, 
and flatten itself like an amoeba, but seldom 
does. 

Although it remains so quiet that one has 
full opportunity for observing it, little is known 
of its life history. It is beautiful and nothing 
more ; and so it lives, and nothing more, re- 



RHIZOPODS. 21 

minding one of the question tlie page put to 
Brutus's wife : 

'' What shaU I do ? Run to the Capitol, and nothing 
more ? 
And so return, and nothing more " ? 

But beauty to be really interesting must be 
coupled witli energy and vivacity, and the sun 
animalcule has little of either. 

Yet it is fond of society, and is often seen 
closely associated with others, their spines in- 
terlaced, the animacules piled in a heap, some- 
times to the number of fifteen in one colony. 

The actinophrys multiplies by division, and 
the colonies are made by successive divisions. 

You will occasionally see some small animal 
entangled among the spines, struggling to get 
away. Sometimes it escapes ; but when it 
does not it sticks fast to the adhesive ray that 
slowly retracts into the body of the sun animal- 
cule, which forms a bubble or vacuole to en- 
compass it. For the actinophrys, like the 
amoeba, throws itself around its food and has 
no permanent mouth. If one ray is not enough 
to hold the struggling victim, other rays bend 
over to assist, and the poor creature is swal- 
lowed alive, and may be seen to squirm after it 
is inside its captor. 

After partaking of food the animalcule be- 



22 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

comes smoother in appearance, the bubbles be- 
coming smaller and less prominent. 

This actinophrys is devoid of organs of 
sense, circulation, respiration, or even diges- 
tion. Yet it measures its efforts by the neces- 
sity : One ray does the work if it can ; if not, 
a second and third and fourth ray comes to its 
assistance. 

Doesn't this look like an approach to intel- 
ligence ? 

But the senseless animal does other things 
which look as if it possessed not only sense but 
reason. Mr. Carter relates that an actinophrys 
was in a vessel where there were vegetable 
cells containing starch particles; One of the 
cells became ruptured, allowing a trifle of the 
contents to protrude through the crevice. The 
actinophrys came, extracted a starch grain, and 
crept to a distance to devour it. It then re- 
turned, extracting grains from the interior of the 
cell, always retiring with each grain, and return- 
ing again, as if it knew the way back and remem- 
bered where starch grains were to be found. 

At another time Mr. Carter saw an actino- 
phrys station itself close to the ripe spore cell 
of a plant, and when the cell burst and the 
young zoospores came out, the actinophrys 
caught every one of them ; retiring after the 



RHIZOPODS. 23 

last one was caught, as if instinctively con- 
scious that no more remained. 

The actinophiys is afraid of its cousin, the 
Mistress Amoeba, and tries to avoid her, for the 
amoeba tears oif bits of the sun animalcule, de- 
vouring it piecemeal. 

The Vampyrella looks like a reddish-yel- 
low actinophrys, but it can withdraw and pro- 
trude its rays with greater celerity. It can 
pierce a spirogyra cell and extract its contents 
in five minutes, or can station itself outside 
the partition between two cells and suck the 
contents of both at once. It has been seen 
to devour the contents of seven cells at one 
meal, growing very portly in the operation. 
Probably because it sucks the life-blood of 
plants, it was named after the vampire, a bat 
which is supposed to suck the blood of ani- 
mals and men. 

When it has not eaten too much, the vam- 
pyrella can squeeze itself into an empty plant- 
cell and emerge in a long train, which gathers 
itself up again into a rounded body. When 
it reproduces, it ^^ hatches " into three or four 
animals, which begin to protrude their rays 
before they are out of the shell or cyst. 



24: 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



IV. 

{Clathrulina elegans.) 

If you find one of these sun animalcules 
living in a glass house on the top of a glass 
stem^ like a flower on a stalk, you may know 
it to be the Clathrulina elegans. 








FiG. 7. — Clathrulina elegans. 



RHIZOPODS. 25 

Tlie beautiful crystal house has many win- 
dows, through which the clathrulina protiTides 
fine rays, which act as arms. When hungry, it 
reaches out and brinojs its food in throuo;h the 
windows. It never uses these raylike pseudo- 
podia for feet, because it has stretched out one 
into a stem, and has fastened itself so that it 
can travel no more. 

This, and the actinophrys, the arcella, and 
the amoeba are all called 7'Jiizopod8 — rJiizo^ 
meaning root ; pod^ meaning foot — because the 
pseudopoclia of the arcella and amoeba are like 
coarse, fleshy roots, and the rays of the two 
former are like fine, threadlike roots. But the 
clathrulina is the most truly " root-footed '' of 
all, because it has transformed one of its rays 
into a genuine root stalk. 

Both the sun animalcule and the clathru- 
lina multiply by division. But the young 
clathrulina finds itself a prisoner in the beau- 
tiful glass house ; and it says : 

" I mean to make my escape somehoio^ and 
since there are no doors I'll just climb out at 
the window." 

So out it goes, though it has to squeeze 
itself into a long string of colorless protoplasm 
in getting through. 

But it soon rounds up into a ball of bub- 



26 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

bles, and lives free like an actinophrys until it 
gets over its childisli pranks, when it puts out 
a ray, takes root, and wanders no more. 

You have lieard of the man wlio founded 
his house on a rock, so that it withstood all the 
tempests, and of the one who founded his on 
sand, so that it washed away ? 

The clathrulina's house has a foundation 
less firm than the shifting sands, for it is built 
upon the fragile rootlets of the duckweed. 

And the storms come and the floods rise 
and the waves beat vehemently upon that 
house, and it sways in the bayou, and some- 
times it stands, but when it falls, great is the 
ruin thereof. 

And when it begins to crack, the little 
clathrulina thinks an earthquake has come ; 
and, though it never left its house before, it 
rushes out colorless and affrighted to die in 
the great watery highway, crushed amid the 
wreck and debris of the flood. 



CHAPTER IL 

THE WHIPLASHEKS. 

{Flagellata.) 
I. 

There are some little chaps in tlie green 
scum of the pools who ride along by simply 
flipping their whiplashes. 

The whiplash is called a flagellitm (which 
means whiplash)^ and the animals themselves 
are called Flagellata because they have the 
flagellum. 

When one of them is going on a journey, 
it keeps the lash pointed ahead and thrown 
into curves or undulations, which pull against 
the water as a bird's wings do against the air, 
thus drawing the animal forward. The lash is 
exceedingly flexible, and when the creature is 
at rest the lash twists about, reaching back 
over or back under the body, as if searching 
for something it has lost, or guarding the body 
from the attack of some enemy. 

4 27 



28 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



One of the marine species, called Nodi- 
liica (light of the night), shines at night like 
glowing phosphorus, making the sea look like 




Fig. 8. — Various stages in the development of Euglena viridis : 
a, red eye spot ; b, pulsating vacuole ; c, nucleus ; 7, preparing 
to form spores. 

fire, and causing the superstitious sailors to feel 
eerie and grewsome. 

This phosphorescence is a curious substi- 
tute that Nature has provided in the absence 
of other light ; for down in the deep sea, liv- 
ing in the cold, dark w^aters where the rays of 
the sun can not penetrate, are myriads of crea- 
tures which are obliged to light their own path- 



THE WHIPLASHERS. 29 

way by the pliospkorescent lamps they carry 
with them, as men who work in dark mines 
light their way by lamps worn upon their caps. 

The prettiest of the fresh-water species are 
the red and the green englena, which look like 
slender willow leaves with the flagellum for a 
leaf stalk. 

But you will know at once that the object 
at which you are looking is not a leaf, because 
it can change its course, and does not drift 
aimlessly, but has the movement of a creature 
which is going somewhere. So potent is will- 
power even in this incipient stage that it trans- 
forms this leaf from an inert thing into a pur- 
poseful heing. 

There is one species of these animals, prob- 
ably the Astasia^ which is colorless, and has a 
square, notched posterior, and a body so lim- 
ber that it can be rolled back upon itself so as 
to resemble an irregular ball. 

The JEuglena triqneta is three-sided, and 
ends in a stiff point instead of a flagellum. 
Its body is not flexible, so it has to go tum- 
bling along in the water like a leaf blown by 
the wind. 

The red, or JEvglena sanguinea^ is bright 
crimson, and, when abundant, gives the water 
a reddish tinge. 



30 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

The Euglena viridis is of a beautiful green 
color, with a crimson eye-spot near the base 
of the flagellum. When seen in shoals it makes 
the water appear green. 

Both these varieties have flexible bodies. 
They double and twist as readily as the lash 
or filament; but when traveling they move 
smoothly, revolving on their long axes. They 
have pulsating vacuoles near the anterior bor- 
der, and nuclei near the middle. 

The green euglena retains its shape and 
color if it dries on the slide of the microscope, 
but the crimson eye-spot fades. When one of 
them becomes aged, since he has no hair to lose 
color by turning gray, he loses the color of 
his eye. 

Have you noticed that this is the first 
semblance of an eye with which you have met 
among these microscopic animals ? This is Na- 
ture's first experiment in eye-making, and it 
does not seem to be very successful, for this 
spot is not a true eye. It is probably no more 
than an organ which can distinguish light from 
darkness, as you, with closed eyes, can tell 
when you pass from shade into sunlight. It is 
the prophecy of an eye ; for somehow, in the 
lower forms. Nature is always giving us a hint 
of what she is going to do by and by. Just as, 



THE WHIPLASHERS. 31 

in the higher forms, she is always recapitulat- 
ing what she has already done, causing each 
higher animal, in the earliest period of its 
existence, to resemble various types of lower 
animals. 

The Flagellata live in water, yet they can 
survive a long drought. When the water in 
the pond dries, they roll into a ball, as the 
amoeba does when it receives a charge of elec- 
tricity, and seem to exude a shell or coat as the 
cabbage worm does w^hen it rests before chang- 
ing into a butterfly. 

These small creatures can endure more heat 
than man can. If the thermometer registers 
112°, the papers are filled with accounts of 
sunstrokes. But the temperature must be 180"^ 
F. before the Euglena ISTews can publish such 
items, and must be 70° higher still before the 
race becomes extinct and the last euglena man 
is dead; for the spores survive greater heat 
than the adults. 

These Flagellata are getting up in the world 
as compared with the Amoebae. The interior 
of their bodies, like that of the amoeba, is a 
soft substance called sarcode ; but they have 
. a mouth which stays in one place at the base 
of the flagellum, so they always know where to 
find it — and thatj you'll admit, is a great con- 



32 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

venience ; the flagellum is a permanent organ, 
whicli doesn't shrink back into the body ; then, 
too, they have three or fom^ ways of increasing 
their numbers : 

1. They multiply by long division — i. e., by 
dividing along the length of the body — which 
process is called longitudinal fission. When 
they do this, the division begins in some of 
them by the division of the flagellum, which 
is an amusing process. They fasten it by the 
free end, and then wriggle or vibrate it until it 
splits into two shreds. 

2. They multiply by short division — i. e., 
by dividing across the long axis. This is called 
transverse fission. 

3. They break up into spores or seeds of 
animals (7, 8, Fig. 10). 

When an animal is about to form spores, 
it withdraws all its organs of locomotion and 
prehension, becoming round and quiescent. 
The outer part becomes a sack or cyst, within 
which numerous small bodies form and grow 
until the cyst wall breaks and the spores or 
germs of new animals fly out. 

This method of reproduction allies the ani- 
mal with the plant. 



THE WHIPLASHERS. 



33 



II. 

Some parents have a child's picture taken 
every year so as to keep a series of photographs 
which shall be a record of his changing fea- 
tures and growth through life. 

Figs. 9 and 10 show a series of pictures, 
giving the life history of a flagellate monad 
whose name is Dallingeria DrysdalL 

This is a wee little thing about ^oVo' ^^ ^^ 
inch in length, w^hich travels gracefully and 




Fig. 9. — Dallino^eria. 



swiftly, ordinarily seeming very serious and 
demure. 

But every little while it appears to feel the 
need of some gymnastic exercise. So it anchors 



34 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

itself by the free ends of its posterior flagella, 
and, by coiling them up tight, draws itself 
back; then, by uncoiling, it suddenly springs 
forward ; again it coils and draws back and 
again springs forward ; repeating this jumping 
process over and over again, seeming to think 
it no end of fun. 

The Dallingeria divides by longitudinal 
fission, splitting the anterior flagellum into 
two, in from one half to one minute. The 
whole process of division occupies not more 
than seven minutes, and is repeated at intervals 
of a few moments ; so the Dallingeria need not 
be lonesome. If one boy tires and will not 
play the jumping game any longer, the other 
can make himself a new companion in seven 
minutes. 

After repeated divisions of this sort our 
little monad makes a great departure from its 
ordinary customs of life. 

Some of the individuals have changed their 
appearance by absorbing the tw^o lateral fla- 
gella, enlarging the nucleus, and forming a 
granular band across the middle of the body 
(5, Fig. 9). One of these individuals comes 
swimming up to our little monad as it springs 
about coiling and uncoiling its flagella, and 
immediately the tw^o love and wed and go 



THE WHIPLASHERS. 



35 



sailing out into the west together (6, Fig. 
10). 

In four or five hours the trailing flagella of 
the one and the anterior flagella and nuclei of 




oo 

° ^ o 

U ^ 
B oO 




Fig. 10. — Dailingeria and family. 

both have disappeared, the two are one, and 
look like a sack from which fine flour is issu- 
ing (7, Fig. 10). The particles of this fine flour 
increase in size until in about four hours they 
are seen to be perfectly formed flagellate 
monads (8, 9, 10, Fig. 10). 

The godfathers of these little creatures, 
Messrs. Dallinger and Drysdale, after whom 
they are named and who first introduced them 
to the public, have, with true paternal fond- 



36 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

ness, left many more photographs of them and 
a much fuller account of the incidents of their 
childhood than can be given here. But what 
has been given may fairly be taken as a brief 
genealogy of the old and distinguished Flagella 
Family. 



CHAPTER HI. 

CILIATA. 

You ha\^e seen the amoeba traveling by 
means of pseudopodia ; the arcella by means 
of pseudopods and miniature balloons ; the 
sun animalcule by means of spines ; and the 
Flagellata by means of delicate whiplashes. 

The fish uses fins for feet ; the tadpole, a 
posterior rudder ; the leech uses suckers ; the 
bird has wings to tread the air; the snake 
walks with its ribs, setting them forward alter- 
nately on either side as a boy does his feet ; 
and when you come to the animal Man, he has 
a great variety of feet or organs of locomotion 
besides his two legs : for what is a sleigh, or a 
carriage, or a boat, or a bicycle, or a railroad 
car, but another kind of pseudopod which 
man has extemporized to expedite his progress ? 
All these are locomotor pseudopodia invented 
to enable man to walk faster. 

But of all the odd things which have been 

37 



38 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

used in traveling, there is nothing odder than 
that which we are about to investigate. It is 
nothing else than very short, fine hairs. 

We are now to study a large class of ani- 
mals, including the bell animalcule, paramoeci- 
um, stentor, vaginicola, and many more, which 
are all known as Ciliata, because they propel 
themselves by fanning the water with cilia or 
short hairs. 

The Ciliata knew how to ^'feather" be- 
fore man ever handled an oar, and they were 
the inventors of the '' back stroke " ; for many 
of them can travel backward as readily as for- 
ward by reversing the action of their cilia. 

Some of them use cilia to assist in swallow- 
ing their food, having a funnel or oesophagus 
lined with hairs which carry the food down 
with the currents of water. 

These animals are an advance upon the 
foregoing ones ; for these all have a perma- 
nent mouth orifice, and a permanent place to 
eject waste food ; their vacuoles are better de- 
veloped; and some even have a dental arma- 
ture or experiment in the direction of teeth. 

Nature is beginning to differentiate or set 
aside portions of protoplasm for special uses, 
and to keep organs ready-made instead of hav- 
ing to make them every time they are needed. 



CILIATA. 39 

Hence these Ciliata have a funnel always 
ready to receive food, and they keep hands to 
secure food and feet with which to travel 
always in stock, in the shape of cilia. 



{VorticellcB.) 



Men go fishing with flies and worms, but 
the Ciliates go fishing with these invisible hairs. 
And this is the way they do it : They keep 
these cilia falling down one after another in a 
circle. Round and round they go, dropping 
and picking themselves up again so fast that 
you can scarcely see them. This creates a whirl- 
pool or vortex in the water, which catches the 
particles of food in its eddies, and carries them 
down the whirlpool into the little animal's 
throat. It is because they make this vortex 
that some are called VorticellcB. 

These are also called bell animalcules, be- 
cause they are shaped like a bell, or a dainty 
china cup. 

They are the dearest little creatures in the 
world — so shy, so pretty, so graceful, so charm- 
ing. You are not a complete, all-around boy 



40 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



or girl if you are not exceedingly pleased the 
first time you see a live bell animalcule. 




Fig. 11. — Yorticella nehulifera, showing development of individ- 
ual stages A to F (e and f free). 



CILIATA. 



41 



Lift a slip of nasturtium from your jar- 
diniere and carefully clip off a rootlet. Put 
it on your slide 
with a drop of 
water, and you 
are likely to see 
a score of Vorti- 
cellcB attached to 
the root : some 
with their beau- 
tiful cups ex- 
panded at the end \ 
of long, thread- 
like stems ; some 
with the stem 
coiled into a 
spiral, resting 
against the root. 

They are 

transparent and 
colorless except 

for the food balls; ^^^' l^.— Bell animalcule: a, ciliated 

disk ; &, rim or lip ; d, oesophagus ; 
but you can see e, funnel ; /, food ; pv, pulsating vac- 

the cilia fanning 

the water to make the whirlpool, and you will 
notice that when mosses or small animals are 
caught in the outer waves they go around in 
a circle, sometimes making their escape when 




42 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

they have made one circuit, and sometimes 
going round and round till they disappear in 
the funnel shown in Fig. 12. 

From the funnel they go into the oesopha- 
guSj thence into the body ; and when the nu- 
triment is extracted they are thrown out again 
at the funnel. 

If coloring matter enters the body it is 
excreted by the vacuole. A little carmine or 
aniline blue mixed with the water on the slide 
will make all these microscopic animals more 
beautiful J and wall aid in discovering the opera- 
tions which are carried on by the body. 

Fig. 12 represents a bell animalcule six hun- 
dred times its natural size. Think of all this 
ciliatino; and swallowing;, dio^estino; and excret- 
ing going on in a creature only one six-hun- 
dredth the size of the picture — a creature too 
small and ethereal to be seen at all by the un- 
aided eye ! 

Yet this minute being has the sense of 
touch developed to a remarkable degree, and 
when any other animal brushes against it even 
lightly, it disappears so suddenly that you won- 
der vs^here it has gone, until you see it lifting 
the budshaped head from the mosses and tim- 
idly creeping out again. 

When frightened it closes its house by 



CILIATA. 



43 



withdrawing the ciliary disk, folding the cilia 
in upon it, contracting the rim, and coiling the 
stem. But the whole thing is done in the 
twinkling of an eye. When the danger is 




Fig. 13. — Vorticellce : Dividing, budding, coiling, uncoiling, 

and free. 
5 



44: IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

passed it reverses this order, unfolding again 
like a bud in the sunshine. 

The stem of the vorticella contracts by 
means of a muscle situated in the interior of 
it, which responds instantly as if at the defi- 
nite command of the will. This is the first 
pronounced case of differentiation of matter 
into muscular fiber. 

The bell animalcule multiplies by longi- 
tudinal fission, as shown by Fig. 13. The 
whole animal parts down to the stem, one 
or both new animals floating away. 

Another mode of reproduction among them 
is the putting out of little buds of animals 
(3, Fig. 13). _ 

The vorticella does something which man 
is trying to imitate. 

You read in the papers that a certain man 
in Illinois was going to die, or appear to die, 
and a crop of barley was to be raised on his 
grave. When the barley ripened his friends 
were to open the grave, and he was to waken 
from his trance and be alive again. 

Another man, in Ohio, went into a hyp- 
notic sleep and lay buried in a cellar for two 
months, at which time his friends dug him up 
and rubbed him into life ; so said the Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 



CILIATA. 45 

You all know how Dr. Tanner lived forty 
days without food. 

The vorticella can do all these and more. 
Whenever a famine conies in Vorticel-land the 
inhabitants close their houses, incase them- 
selves in cysts, and remain unnourished in- 
deiinitely. Or when there comes a drought, 
and the water in the pools evaporates, the little 
creatures huddle together in the* deepest hol- 
lows, eating and playing as happy as ever till 
the last drop is gone. Then they go into a 
trance or hypnotic sleep, lying in hypnocysts, 
parching in the hot sun for months. But when 
the rains come and the pond refills, out they all 
come trooping, as bright and lively as though 
they felt much refreshed, seeming to say by 
their actions, '' Oh, it's a great lark to play Rip 
Van Winkle ! " 

Sometimes as they lie encysted in the dry 
bed of a pond, old ^olus, the wind giant, 
comes along and catches them up with the 
dust and bears them captive in his arms as he 
flies through space, depositing them at last on 
roofs to be carried into cisterns, or in horse 
troughs, or in eaves clogged with leaves, where 
they waken from their trances, come out of 
their cases, grow new stems, and begin to turn 
about in all directions, exploring the new world 



46 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



in which they find themselves. And if they 
had eyes there is no doubt that in them would 
be that wondering look which is in the eyes 
of new babies as they turn their gaze about the 




Fig. 14. — Animated calla-lilies. 

four-walled world in which they lie puzzling 
over the strange environment into which they 
have come. And when you see these little 
bells you vsdll smile at them as you do at the 
babies, and say : '' Blessings on your little fuzzy 
heads ! Where did you come from ? " 



CILIATA. 47 

There are known to be fifty varieties of 
Vorticellse. Some live solitary, each on a stem 
of its own ; others live in colonies or villages 
on branching treelike stems. In some of these 
the individual can close kis house without 
alarming the rest of the village, or the entire 
community can close up at once. Others, as 
the epistylis, have a rigid stem, and only the 
individual can contract. 

When tkese people live in colonies, you 
perceive that there must be something like 
co-operative housekeeping, for, though each 
does his own fishing, he must do it wkere the 
company is located. There are some colonies, 
as on Steamer No. 2, Ocean Line, where the 
empty stems seem to indicate tkat some way- 
ward member of the family has broken kis 
tether and has gone off to set up in business 
for himself. 

Fig. 14 shows a colony of ten calla-lily- 
shaped beauties that I found fishing together. 
They at no time recoiled singly, but occa- 
sionally all sank at once in great precipitation 
upon the main stem. 

After a while they decided that the fishing 
was poor, so tkey all massed together and emi- 
grated to parts unknown. 

Later they were found living in opulence 



48 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

in a new country, and in an hour or two they 
had again colonized a new territory. 

When one of the solitary Vorticellse be- 
comes tired of its dwelling place and desires to 
" go West and grow up with the country," it 
closes its house just as it does when fright- 
ened. Then it breaks camp — in rare instances 
carrying the stem with it, trailing through 
the water. But usually a second circle of 
cilia appears near the posterior or stem end, 
and the vorticella breaks loose, leaving the 
stem coiled and useless. Then it backs out 
and turns round, sailing with the posterior 
part foremost, just as you back a boat out and 
turn it around in order to row with the pointed 
end against the stream. 

When it reaches the far country which, 
though the goal of its aspirations, is but a 
neighboring island of moss, it cuddles down 
into the moss, seeming to attach itself by this 
last band of cilia until it has time to grow a 
new stem. 

Then the cilia appear at the other ex- 
tremity, and what tvas the anterior part when 
attached before is again the anterior or mouth 
part of the body. 

The books and the scientists say that when 
a bell animalcule is preparing to move, it " loses 



CILIATA. 49 

its anterior cilia and rim,, and develops pos- 
terior cilia ; and that when it breaks away the 
anterior part becomes posterior and the mouth 
closes, never to open again^ 

In other words, they would lead you to be- 
lieve that when the vorticella moves it stands 
on its head till it moves again — that it is a 
sort of patent, reversible, double-action creature 
which can turn feet into head and head into 
feet at pleasure. 

But the vorticella itself seems to have 
different ideas of things, and protests against 
the statement that it " loses its rim and an- 
terior cilia"; 1, 1', T, Fig. 15, shows one of 
them in three stages of preparation for travel. 
2, shows one traveling with both circles of cilia 
present, the scientists to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 

The same Fig., 3, 3', 3^', 3^^', shows one 
which rowed up to some moss, attached itself, 
and, within two hours and a half, grew a stem 
twice its length, and displayed the posterior 
cilia again as if prepared to begin its migrations 
anew. So, if it really stood on its head the 
second time it was attached, it was only two 
hours and a half before it turned another 
somersault and opened its first mouth again. 

Now, No. 2 or No. 3 is a frail and delicate 



50 



m BROOK AND BAYOU. 




Fig. 15. — Vorticellae. 



creature, and a scientist is a great and powerful 
man ; but if No. 2 or No. 3 chooses to enter 
into a contest mtli the great scientist, you may 



CILIATA. 51 

be sure the little one will come out ahead. 
That's a way of little bodies whose mouths 
can't be closed. 

And if, as I suspect, the Vorticellae have 
decided to have an anterior or prehensile band 
of cilia and also a posterior or locomotor 
band, and to keep the cilia concealed or ab- 
sorbed into the body like true pseudopodia 
when not in use — if they have decided to do 
this, they'll do it ; and it's useless for the scien- 
tists to argue the matter with them. They will 
go right along having their own way, looking 
so sweet and amiable and playing so gracefully 
that you will never know their pretty ways 
are only a cloak to hide a deep-laid plot to 
confound the scientists. 

As the bell animalcule sails free, it assumes 
a great variety of shapes, some of which are 
only apparent ones, caused by its rolling over 
in the water and presenting different sides to 
view. Sometimes it seems round ; sometimes 
almost square ; sometimes it looks like a basin 
or kettle ; and sometimes like an old-fashioned 
entailed hat. 

They keep up a lively fanning of the water 
with their cilia as they travel. 

But some of them are too cute to work 
their own laborious passage in this way. Those, 



52. 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



especially, who live in colonies on branched 
stems like to travel far and fast ; so they at- 
tach themselves to some larger animal which is 
a swift sailer, like a cyclops or the larva of 




Fig. 16. — Ocean-steamer line. 



some insect, and are thus transported without 
effort on their part. 

You see they had their ocean-steamer lines 
and Great Easterns long before we had. 

Can you hear them sing as they sail — 

Oh, a life on the ocean wave, 
A home on the rolling deep ? 



CILIATA, 



53 



II. 
IN A GOBLET. 

( Vagi7iicola.) 

There are some of the Ciliata that live 
in crystal vases. These vases are longer than 
those of the bell animalcule, and the animal 
within is very elastic and can extend itself to 
twice the length of its inclosing case or house ; 






; 3 4 

Fig. 17. — 1, CotJiurnia; 2, 3, 4, VaginicoloB, 

or it can contract so as to lie at the bottom of 
the vase. 

These are the Vaginicola and Cothitrnia. 
The vase in which they live is called a lorica. 
They are attached only at the bottom of the 



54 I^"^ BROOK AND BAYOU. 

lorica, being free on the sides. Both they and 
the lorica are transparent ; and the only way in 
which you can distinguish the vaginicola from 
the cothurnia is that the vase of the former is 
sessile while that of the latter is attached by a 
short stem, and is sometimes tinged ^^dth brown. 

When the cothurnia is frightened it tijjs 
its house ovei% by bending the stem or pedicle, 
at the same time that it contracts into it to 
escape the danger. 

Both these animals are of much the same 
nature as the bell animalcule. They are trans- 
parent, have pulsating vacuoles and crown of 
cilia, and procure food in the same manner by 
creating currents in the water. The chief dif- 
ference is that these can stretch like rubber 
and the bell animalcule can not; and these 
look like flowers in a vase instead of flowers 
on a stem. 

They do not need to leave their houses to 
procure food. They can sit at their doors and 
fish, or can even remain halfway down in 
the lorica and produce the currents and secure 
the food. 

Two animals often live in one case, and 
look very cunning, fishing together or cuddling 
on the floor of their house ; for they can be 
distinctly seen through the lorica. 



CHART 




Vaginicola. 



CILIATA. 55 

You may watch them gradually lengthen 
their bodies until they lean far out over the 
top of the vase, in their eagerness to secure 
choice morsels. Then, when they are thus ex- 
tended, if you tap the slide, they will spring 
back and hide in the bottom of the vase, trying 
to make believe they are not at home. 

They are like the two little children left 
in charge of the house, who scampered under 
the bed when a stranger tapped at the door, 
and who, w^hen he rapped again, timidly sang 
out, " We're all gone ! " 

I have seen a bell animalcule and a vagini- 
cola play Pussy-wants-a-corner (1, 2, Chart II). 

The former was anchored near the latter in 
such position that every time it recoiled on its 
stem it hit against the vaginicola's house, caus- 
ing it to recoil also. When the bell animalcule 
uncoiled and set its w^hirlpool in motion again, 
out would come the vaginicola and set its whirl- 
pool going, which jarred and alarmed the bell 
animalcule. Back it would spring, tapping at 
the vaginicola's door on the way, and under 
the bed the vaginicola would dart. Thus they 
kept going, each probably thinking the other 
very-^rude to plague it in that way, when all it 
wanted was to attend quietly to its own fishing 
without molesting anybody. 



M I^ BROOK AND BAYOU. 

The ^ young of the Vaginicolw come from 
true buds and swim about freely for awhile, 
settling down at length and forming a lorica in 
which to dwell ; f or, like the arcella and clathru- 
lina, they have to build their own dwellings. 
Animals, you see, are like people : some are 
'^ born with a silver spoon in their mouths " — -that 
is, with a fortune already provided; and some 
are born destitute and are obliged to take care 
of themselves and build their own houses. 

If you examine minutely all the members of 
the vaginicolan family you may spy out one of 
Nature's secrets which she never breathed to 
anybody until long after she made these proto- 
zoans. You have already noticed that Nature 
w^as beginning to make loricas, into which the 
animals could retreat in times of danger. Now 
the secret you may discover is that she already 
had in mind a strong, hard house, like the snail's, 
into which the owner could withdraw, dosing 
the door heJiind Jiim to bar out intruders ; and, 
while she was working among these Vagivicolce^ 
she was experimenting on just such a house as 
this. You will find the snail's house closed se- 
curely by the horny operculum he draws into 
the opening ; and the JPyxicola has a similar 
operculum to close his vase. Attached to the 
side of its lorica the Thuricola has a valve 



CILIATA. 



'57 



which closes when the animal shrinks down 
into its case, as the lid closes over the nest of 
the trapdoor spider. Think of spiders and pro- 





1 CL) ^-^-JL^ 2 

Fig. 18. — l,Pyxicola; 2, Thuricola. 



tozoans having actual doors which swing on 
hinges ! 

Who knows of what else beside spiders and 
snails Nature was thinking when she made the 
thuricola ? She may have been revolving in her 
mind schemes concerning an animal called Man^ 
who should have a lorica of brick or stone with 
an electric bell to ring open the valve. 

But we are prying too far into Nature's 



58 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

plans, and must go back into the protozoan 
world where she is at work, and where one 
morning No. 3, Chart II, appeared on the stage 
of action, in a beautiful crystal case. An hour 
later, tired of single blessedness, it had changed 
into 4, — two twisted together with cilia playing. 

After a time they extended themselves be- 
yond the lorica, making great whirlpools. A 
diatom gently sailing that way was caught in 
the current and carried round and round for 
fifteen minutes, now in wide, now in narrow 
circles, now fast, now slow. His little elec- 
tric launch had a hard time with the buffeting 
waves. When he at length escaped, he settled 
down in a clump of reeds, " quite chapfallen." 

He seemed to be reciting poetry, and to be 
saying : 

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 

Rolled to starhoard, rolled to larhoard, when the surge 
was seething free, 

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam foun- 
tains in the sea. 

Death is the end of life ; ah ! why should life all labor 
be? 

Let us alone. Is there any peace 

In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? 

All things have rest . Let us alone. 

Presently a little brilliantly green, transparent 
paramoecium, scurrying merrily along, fell into 



CILIATA. 59 

this same vaginicolan Chary bdis. He struggled 
bravely for awhile, and after many giddy revo- 
lutions was cast upon a reef of vegetation, 
utterly worn and fagged with the battle of life. 

He merrily scurried no more ; and his rea- 
sons for no longer exerting himself were the 
same that Brer Jeems's wife gave for his not 
sawing Brer Remus's wood : 

" Hope you'll 'sense Jeems," she said. " He 
can't ver' well wuk to-day. Fust place, he got 
no time ; second place, he doan feel fnst-rate 
dis mawnin' ; third place, he's dadeP 



HI. 
THE TRUMPET ANIMALCULE. 

{StentoT?} 

If you try to get a snap shot with your 
kodak at a trumpet animalcule, you will obtain 
such a variety of photographs as will seem to 
represent a score of different creatures instead 
of a single one. Fig. 19 gives a collection of pho- 
tographs of these animals, taken with a pencil. 
The Stentor lives either solitary or in colonies. 
At times, when attached, it twists on its stem, 
looking like a haK-fiUed balloon swaying about 



60 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



and tugging at its ropes, wrinkled and grooved 
at the bottom. There are cilia distributed over 
the whole body of the stentor, but in some of 



WA^^^ 




Fig. 19. — Colony of stentors. 

these figures (2, 3) you will notice a cluster of 
cilia which at times appears external, at other 
times internal. This cluster is the budding 
head of a young stentor ; for the pulsating 



CILIATA. 61 

vacuole divides and the moutli and throat of 
the offspring appear before there is any sign 
of division in the parent. This is another case 
of transverse fission. The mouth of the new 
creature appears about halfway down the tube 
of the old one. When the division is complete, 
both swim away smaller in size, resembling an 
elongated bell animalcule. Two hours are oc- 
cupied in this process of multiplication. 

The disk of some stentors looks like a ripe 
sunflower with the seeds removed. The rim or 
lip around the disk seems to be so flexible 
that they can " pout their lips " and " make 
mouths.'' 

The indigestible food is expelled from the 
mouth or funnel. Occasionally one of them tries 
to swallow an object larger than its throat, and, 
after repeated efforts, is obliged to relinquish 
the undertaking and eject the whole mass. 

A stentor has lived for three days under a 
cover glass, surrounded with tallow to prevent 
evaporation of the water, and has seemed to 
enjoy his walled fortress. 

They usually contract to avoid danger ; but 
sometimes they fall over and lie at full length 
till the disturbance has passed. They are not as 
timid as the vaginicola, and pay no attention 
when, you tap the slide. Do you suppose that 



62 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

is because tlie vao:inicola can liear, and the 
stentor is deaf ? 

Some of the stentors are always rovers ; oth- 
ers remain for life attached to one place ; while 
still others are able to attach and free them- 
selves at pleasure. These latter take a home- 
stead and live there as long as they like the 
climate and the neighbors, and when they are 
no longer pleased they pull up stakes and move 
along, pre-empting another claim. 

It must be admitted that the stentors are 
not very graceful ; neither have they fine fig- 
ures ; but they try to remedy these defects by 
wearing delicate red, blue, green, brown, black, 
and amber color. 

It would scarcely be expected that a crea- 
ture which is itself microscopic would be found 
to have still smaller animals parasitic upon it, 
but the stentor furnishes food and home to nu- 
merous beings which were at first supposed to 
be its children, but which are of alien blood. 
The same is true of nearly every animal we 
shall find in the bayou, from the comparatively 
hardy cyclops to the ethereal bell animalcule. 



CILIATA. 63 

IV. 

LIVING SLIPPEES. 

[Faramoechim.) 

If you place a dead clam or a bit of beef- 
steak in water and keep it in a warm place for 
a day or two, the water will be swarming with 
minute white specks in constant motion. They 
are barely visible when held to the light in a 
glass dish. They are the Paramoechtm cauda- 
tum^ which looks flat, though it is slightly con- 




FiG. 20. — Paramecium : a, vacuole distributing secretion ; &, vac- 
uole filling ; c, nucleus ; d, oesophagus ; e, funnel ; /, food 
balls ; g^ temporary anus. 

vex on the back, and which has but one vacu- 
ole ; and the Paramcecmm aurelia^ which is 
somewhat prismatic or three-sided, and has 
two pulsatile vacuoles that close alternately. 
These animals may be found in your nasturtium 
vase, or they may be bred in smaller numbers 
in water in which hay or any vegetable matter 
is decomposing ; but they are larger and more 



64 IN BROOK AXD BAYOU. 

numerous in water containing meat ; and clam 
soup is their favorite diet. 

When found in water rich in decaying vege- 
table matter they are full of green and reddish 
food, and the richness of their color is propor- 
tionate to the richness of their pasture. Usu- 
ally they are almost colorless, and some species 
are so diminutive that under a high magnify- 
ing power they look no larger than a small 
pansy seed. Those which appear to the naked 
eye as minute white specks seem almost two 
inches long when under an ordinary school mi- 
croscope. 

The aurelia is often called the slipper ani- 
malcule because it resembles a moccasin or low 
slipper badly run down at the heel. The open- 
ing in the slipper for the entrance of the foot 
is, in the paramoecium, the funnel leading to 
the oesophagus, and is lined with cilia which 
fan the water to bring particles of food into the 
funnel. The food of many of these ciliates is 
made into balls before it leaves the oesopha- 
gus and enters the sarcode or soft substance, 
through which it makes a circuit of the body 
before the waste portion is ejected. Owing to 
the numerous vacuoles formed around the food 
balls, the ciliates have been called the ^^ poly- 
gastria," or many-stomached. There are peo- 



CILIATA. 65 

pie that live to eat, who must envy these crea- 
tures their numerous stomachs. 

The hairs which line the funnel are the pre- 
hensile cilia, since they take the place of hands 
in securing food. The locomotor cilia are dis- 
tributed over the whole surface of the body, 
acting as oars and propelling the animal like 
an ancient galley manned by a hundred rowers. 
Many an unwary victim sliding down the funnel 
throat, gets a free ride, like Jonah, but finds it- 
self in a dangerous craft and one likely to cap- 
size, for the paramoecium often sets out w^ith 
a long, rolling motion, taking a spiral course 
throuo;h the water. 

The paramcecium is cosmopolitan in habit, 
living in all waters and accommodating itself 
to a great variety of conditions. 

The nucleus is club-shaped, and when sin- 
gle is located near the center ; when there are 
two they are located near the extremities. The 
same is ti*ue of the pulsating vacuoles. The 
vacuole is a rudimentary heart, whose purpose, 
like that of other hearts, is the circulation of 
the fluid secreted. A heart, you know, is a 
pumping machine, with pipes so laid as to irri- 
gate every part of the body. 

Paramoecii can bend and twist their bodies, 
and often amuse themselves by rolling over 



66 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

and over with a swift, graceful motion. At 
other times they anchor or attach themselves 
by one extremity, moving the other around in 
a circle. 

Sometimes they gambol about in the water, 
disporting themselves like seals in the tanks at 
the parks. 

The space between the slide and the cover 
glass used with a microscope is very small, yet 
it is sufficient to admit three layers of these ani- 
mals. In their gambols it occasionally happens 
that at the same time one darts under and 
another over the back of a third without dis- 
turbing it. 

The paramoecium is soft and slightly elas- 
tic, and can squeeze through channels among 
the mosses, which are narrower than its 
body. 

The bits of moss are islands and continents 
to little things like slipper animalcules. They 
go in and out, exploring the bays and rounding 
the capes as if they had a curiosity about them, 
or intended making an atlas of them. Some- 
times you may see a long line of these live slip- 
pers, each resting its toe on the coast of a moss 
continent, the whole looking like a row of 
canoes drawn up along a beach. 

The paramoecium can endure an astonish- 



CILIATA. 



67 



ino; deg:ree of cold. Both it and the bell 
animalcule may be found in water which has 
been gently stirred until it is thickened with 
flakes of ice. But if the water remains quiet 
until it becomes solid ice, and is then thawed, 
the animals will have disappeared. 

Sometimes a paramoecium becomes weary 
of living alone and seeks a mate, by whose side 





Fig. 21. — Conjugation. 

it lives in such close companionship that the 
twain are made one and remain a single animal, 
either for an indefinite period or for evermore. 
This is called conjugation, and is a custom 
among all the Ciliata (1 and 2, Fig. 21). 

The Chilodon cucidlidus multiplies by both 
longitudinal and transverse fission. These little 



68 IN BROOK A^B BAYOU. 

creatures roll and rush about in a very amus- 
ing manner, and the two kinds of division 
might be considered an optical illusion, except 
for the fact that while the normal animal has 
but one pulsating vacuole, when it comes to 
divide, two pulsating vacuoles appear, — near the 
attached ends in those that divide transversely, 
and near the free ends of those that divide lon- 
gitudinally. 

The paramoecium's ordinary method of mak- 
ing two out of one is by transverse fission ; and 
so rapid is this process, and so often repeated, 
that it has been computed that one paramoe- 
cium may become the progenitor of 1,364,000 
in forty-two days. 

Now, w^hat a fortunate thing it is that the 
original paramoecium is eliminated — all used 
up — in the production of the children ! 

If old Mother P. had to live on and take 
care of all the 1,364,000 children, she'd be 
more distracted than the old woman who lived 
in a shoe, and had so many children she didn't 
know what to do, — especially if she happened to 
have a kind-hearted neighbor like the one who 
gave each of her friend's five boys a tin horn 
for a Christmas present. 

Little wonder that the paramoecium's solilo- 
quy runs thus : 



CILIATA. 



69 



To be, or not to be, is not the question. 

'Tis better not endure the one million three hundred and 

sixty-four thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to. 
One million three hundred and sixty- four thousand tin 

horns ! There's the respect 
That makes calamity a long life. 
I'll rather end the ills I have 
Than fly to others that I know not of. 

And she shows admirable discretion. 




SWAN'S NECK. 
{Trachelocerca olor.) 

The Traclielocerca olor is like a paramoecium 
with an extensile neck which can be protruded 
ten or twelve times the length of the body or 
can be entirely withdrawn into it. You will 
wonder how so much neck can be contained 
in so little body. 



70 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



The trachelocerca is called the swan's neck, 
because the curvings of its long throat suggest 
those of the swan's. But sometimes it dou- 
bles its neck around in a manner to suggest 
the writhing of a serpent rather than the 
grace of a swan ; and w^hen you see it darting 
its head about in the water with a motion 




<s!m^^'T\j\j — ~ — s 



Fig. 22. — Trachelocerca. 

like that of a fowl picking up food, seemingly 
trying to tie its throat into a knot^ you are 
likely to say to it " You little goose/' instead of 
'' You lovely swan." 

Sometimes the neck seems to be a proboscis 
to seize food ; sometimes a spy searching out 
the land and saying, "Where does my way 
lie ? " Sometimes it seems to be a general in- 
formation bureau, gathering facts about the 



CILIATA. 71 

outlying country ; or perhaps a bodyguard, 
looking before, behind, and around in all direc- 
tions for any foe who may be lurking near. 
At other times it is a pilot standing at his post 
and steering true to the line, as the trachelo- 
cerca steadily follows its course in a clear sea. 

The trachelocerca is colorless, has one pul- 
sating vacuole, and its nucleus is so finely 
divided as to look like powder scattered 
through the body. It can be detected only 
by using aniline ; the nucleus always remain- 
ing uncolored. Previous to reproduction this 
powder-like nucleus gathers into a solid one, 
but after fission the nuclei of both individuals 
break into small particles and disperse as be- 
fore. When swimming, it usually carries the 
neck foremost, but it can " back water " like 
the other Ciliata. The body can be contracted 
into almost spherical shape, or it can be greatly 
elongated at pleasure; and you will envy it 
this faculty, for, if a boy's body were elastic 
he could stretch it up to reach those apples 
that hang too high, or contract it so that his 
hands and feet would not protrude so far 
beyond his last year's suit of clothes. 

A gentleman, w^ho watched a trachelocerca 
dividing, says that it withdrew the neck and 
remained quiet for some time, except for a 



72 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

ciliary action about the orifice for the neck, 
and an occasional brief protrusion of the pro- 
boscis. The animal appeared irregular and 
lumpy in outline. Then there appeared a line 
of constriction around the middle of the body, 
and presently the two halves were loosened so 
as to slide freely on each other. Once the 
anterior half threw out its neck and bobbed 
it about for a moment ; then the head of the 
animal seemed to shift around to the side, at 
right angles to its former position, while a 
ciliary wreath appeared in corresponding posi- 
tion on the posterior half or new animal. This 
gave the two the appearance of having divided 
by longitudinal fission, whereas it was by true 
transverse fission. About an hour and a half 
after the first appearance of the constriction, 
the new animal threw out its neck to a great 
length and writhed it about with the utmost 
agility, sometimes completely encircling the 
body. The young one remained in contact with 
its parent, which again protruded its neck in 
the same manner. Then both were quiet. 
Again both threw out their necks and again 
dozed off to sleep. 



CILIATA. 7a 

VI. 

{AmpJiileptus.) 

There is another creature which closely re- 
sembles the swan's neck except that it is quite 
sharply pointed at both extremities and has 
several pulsating vacuoles arranged in a row 
along the side of its body. It is covered with 
fine cilia like the paramoecium, but is larger, 
measuring about one sixteenth of an inch. It 
is not so lively as the trachelocerca^ being quiet 
and dignified in its movements. It can travel 
backward or forward with equal facility, as 
most of the ciliata can, since, using cilia for 
oars, all it has to do is to work the cilia in 
the opposite direction, or reverse the engine. 
The animal being covered with longitudinal 
rows of cilia has a slightly grooved appear- 
ance when it raises its neck so as to give an 
oblique view. 

In most animals we find the head sur- 
mounting the neck ; but if you look for that 
in the AmpJiileptus^ you will be disappointed, 
for the proboscis terminates in a flat disk, and 
the mouth or swallowing tube is located at 
one side, below the neck, — that is, the mouth 
is in its shoulder, and the neck is used as the 



74 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



elephant uses his proboscis^ to convey food to 
the mouth. 

The amphileptus is supposed to be one of 
the transverse fission class, but No. 3, Fig. 23, 
seems to be contrary-minded. These two were 
so closely attached along the entire length of 




a-- 
a-k 



Fig. 23. — Amphileptus. 



their bodies that when the large one raised its 
proboscis the little one's neck moved with 
it. It seems hardly probable that two ani- 
mals which had once been separated could 



CHART III. 



MATINEE 

BY THE MERRY 

COLEPSCO: 




CILIATA. 75 

ever unite so completely as to act with one 
mind. 

If they do divide transversely the two parts 
must slide upon each other, or the neck and 
mouth of the old one must have the same mi- 
gratory habit as the trachelocerca's. 

There is a species of amphileptus in w^hich 
the vacuoles are arranged in two series, one on 
either side of the body. 

You remember that in the aurelia the two 
vacuoles contracted alternately? In this am- 
phileptus the contraction runs from the ante- 
rior to the posterior part first on one side and 
then on the other. This alternation of motion 
along the two sides is interesting because it is 
the beginning of just such motion as we see in 
man when he walks. So here, again, we have 
surprised another of Nature's schemes long be- 
fore she made it public. 



VII. 

THE JOLLY NAIL KEG. 

{Coleps.) 

Sometimes you will see little green-black or 
brown-black kegs wdth narrow staves and sunk- 
en hoops, rolling about in the water or careen- 

7 



76 IN BROOK AiS^D BAYOU. 

ing over and over without changing place, with 
such velocity that it is impossible to tell what 
shape or manner of being you are looking upon. 
When you twirl a spool on a string or spin a 
top, you can distinguish nothing except the cir- 
cular movement. So, when the little keg twirls 
rapidly you can distinguish nothing but revo- 
lution on an axis, and you feel sure it must 
have a string on one end and be anchored to 
the stick or moss near by. It seems to be tug- 
ging hard at its anchor. 

This is the little Coleps. And he is a merry 
little fellow, eternally rolling and rolling. That 
is the business of life, he thinks ; and almost 
the only time he pauses in his mad career is 
when he divides, as in 3, Chart III, or when 
he eats ; and then he seems in haste to get 
through and go to twirling again. 

Once a rotifer was cinished by the cover 
glass, and presently coleps began to assemble 
from all directions, as if scenting the prey 
from afar. They gathered around the rotifer, 
sucking the Juice and distendiug their sides 
with feasting on so much richness, "swelling 
wisibly before my wery eyes," as old Well- 
er said. While the little keg-shaped things 
were thus engaged, one could distinguish their 
toothed extremities, their sunken hoops, their 



CILIATA. 77 

longitudinal lines or staves, their general color, 
and their red eye-spot. 

As soon as their appetites were satisfied, 
away they went, careening about as though 
that was the one thing the doing of which 
could not be postponed. 

Apparently the coleps's sole idea of hap- 
piness is to roll over in the water. Or per- 
haps that is its idea of usefulness. We all 
have such different ideas as to what is the really 
necessary thing to be done in life ! And some- 
times it seems as though the little coleps had 
figured it down as fine as the rest of us, who 
work with all our might and exert all our 
strength in turning around in one spot and 
accomplishing nothing of consequence. Per- 
haps to the eye of Omniscience we men and 
women, boys and girls, are only dusky little 
barrels, forever rolling, rolling — doing nothing* 
Possibly the busy coleps thinks its work of 
immense importance, and expects after a life 
well spent to receive the reward : " Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant ; thou hast been 
faithful in rolling, I will make thee Master of 
High and Lofty Tumbling." 



78 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



YIII. 

{Eiq:)lotes.) 

We have seen some little busy bodies rnn- 
ning along tlie stems of spirogyra, or the roots 
of duckweed on the slide, smelling along like 
mice, and, like mice, halting suddenly, taking a 
step backward, as though in search of some- 





FiG. 24. — 1 , Euplotes harpa ; 2, Euplotes charon. 

thing of delicious odor over which they had 
passed in their haste ; for they seem to have a 
well-developed sense of smell, and to be the 
first animal with true olfactory organs. When 
you get a side view of them you (*an see their 
humped-up backs and the swift movements of 
their legs. 



CILIATA. 79 

In this position they somewhat resemble 
the wood armadillo — that gray, many -legged 
isopod which you find under boards on the 
ground. 

The family name of these creatures is ^u- 
plotes cliaron^ and you will be glad to make 
their acquaintance, I am sure ; for this is the 
first of these microscopic animals which you 
know to have anterior and posterior ciliate 
processes or legs — to set one foot ahead of an- 
other, and to actually loalh. 

It is a comical little body, as it scampers 
out of sight under the decaying vegetation, or 
runs nibbling along it. 

The legs are large, stiff, ciliate spines, and 
are attached to the body by true Joints or 
articulations, for the animal can walk or run 
either backward or forward. The Eiijplotes 
did a good thing when it got a leg which 
need not be made every time it was wanted. 
A permanent leg was a great labor-saving 
device. 

The Euplotes striatus resembles minute, 
transparent lilies of the valley gathered into 
a ball, rolling through the water as an ani- 
mated crystal sphere. 

The E. Tiarpa is a much larger and more 
imposing animal, with an important and mas- 



80 



IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 



terful air as it Journeys onward. When it 
swims on its back^ as it usually does, you can 
plainly see the band of large cilia extending to 
the middle of the body, and the coarse spines 
or leglike cilia, part of which tiu-n backward, 
part forw^ard. 




CHAPTER IV. 

PKOTOZOA]^ PHILOSOPHY. 

One day a little bell animalcule was float- 
ing listlessly in the water, its ciliated disk 
withdrawn, its head drooping on its stem, 
looking very hopeless and disconsolate. It 
did not care for food ; it did not seem to be 
glad that the day was bright and beautiful, 
and that the water glistened with the sun- 
beams that shone upon it ; it did not even re- 
coil as usual, in modest fear when a big Para- 
moecium came along ; it did not seem to care 
whether he ate it or not. 

^^Why, w^hat's the matter, little Belle?" 
asked the Paramoecium. " You look so for- 
lorn, and don't seem to care to live any 
longer." 

" I don't know as I do," said the Vorticella 
sadly. '' Indeed, I don't know that I am alive. 
I don't think I ever have been. And it just 
makes me feel like crying to think of it." 

81 



82 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

'' Why, here you are, a whole pretty little 
sweetheart ; so w^hat is there for you to grieve 
about ? " asked the Paramoecium cheerfully. 

'' Why, you see it is this way," said Belle. 
" My mother divided into two to make me, and 
so I'm my own mother, and there isn't any me. 
And my mother was half of my grandmother, 
and so I'm my own grandmother. I don't see 
where there is room for any ' me ' about me." 

The Paramoecium drew nearer and said in 
a confidential whisper : '' I don't mind telling 
yoUj Belle, that I've always been puzzled by 
that same question, for the same thing is true 
of me. But I always thought it best to keep 
a stiff upper lip, and to act bold and confident, 
so people wouldn't suspect that I w^asn't any- 
body." 

" Yes, I knew it was true of you, too, or I'd 
never have had the courage to speak to you 
about it. Only yesterday I saw one of your 
family break in two crosswise. Our family 
divide from the top down lengthwise. But I 
knew that, lengthwise or crosswise, it must 
amount to the same thing. And to see it done 
right here before my very eyes, and those two 
ends of a Paramoecium start off as though 
they really thought they w^ere somebody, when 
neither one was anything in this weary world 



PROTOZOAN PHILOSOPHY. 83 

but the half of its own mother — to see all this 
brought my own trouble home to me so forci- 
bly that I couldn't sleep all night for think- 
ing of it. It breaks my heart to think of 
us all being just -|- mother, ^ grandmother, ^ 
great-grandmother, and probably not ourselves 
at all." 

At this point a Swan's Neck, who had been 
watchino^ them from an island across the chan- 
nel, came gliding up in her soft, insinuating 
manner and said : 

" Dear friends, I hope I am not intruding, 
but I think I can guess the subject of your 
conversation." 

" Oh, you're quite welcome, Trache ; and if 
you guess right, we'll tell you," said the Para- 
moecium. 

" You know I go about the w orld a great 
deal more than you do. Belle," said the Swan's 
Neck, "and, walking so noiselessly, I often come 
upon people w^ith their heads together, and 
they are always talking of one thing. The one 
great question which occupies the minds of all 
thoughtful VorticellsB, Paramoecii, Amoebae — of 
all people of w^hatever color, green or red or 
yellow or white, of every nationality — is this 
same one which you are discussing, viz., ' Have 
we any individual existence, or are we merely 



84 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

the sum of our ancestors, the product of he- 
redity ? ' " 

" Now, if they are all puzzling about it, 
why not call a meeting and see if, by putting 
all our heads together at once, we can not 
come at the truth of the matter ? " said the 
Paramoecium. 

" Well, suppose we go and invite each tribe 
to send its best philosophers to discuss the 
question ? " said the Swan's Neck. 

" Yes, and let's invite the mathematicians 
too, for it is really a question of division and 
multiplication," said the Paramoecium, who 
prided himself on belonging to a family which 
could perform 1,364,000 divisions in forty-two 
days. 

But the Vorticella said : '' I think I'll not 
go with you to issue the in^dtations. I've 
sometimes broken loose, taking my stem with 
me, and sometimes have left it and have gone 
alone when I wished to cross the water to 
reside. But I feel so discourao;ed now that I 
don't believe I'd ever be able to take root again 
if I should break from my moorings." 

So the other two went off to summon the 
Stentor and the Sun Animalcule, the Chilodon 
and the Coleps, the Amoeba and the Arcella, to 
meet with them at the home of Bell Animal- 



PROTOZOAN PHILOSOPHY. 85 

ciile, to see what solution of tlie vexed question 
tliey could find. 

When they met in council the philosophers 
did all the talking, as usual. It is impossible 
to reproduce here all their learned discourses, 
but the pith of their argument was this : 

" No one of us is the whole of his father, 
grandfather, etc. ; so we can not be any one of 
these individuals, but must be some other indi- 
vidual. We eat and assimilate food, and make 
new matter which is not and never has been a 
part of om* ancestors. So the greater part of us 
must be ourselves. Consequently, we are jus- 
tified in thinking of ourselves as ' me,' and not 
as ^my forebears.' " 

" Oh, but you are not treating the question 
fairly," said the mathematicians. " What is 
there of us but ancestor when we are first 
made ? And if we are all ancestor then, what 
can we ever be but ancestor with a full stomach, 
or ancestor with an empty stomach ? There is 
no telling into what morasses speculation may 
not lead us. But fio^ures can not lie. If we take 
figures we shall arrive at the truth. Now let us 
try this. I have in me ^ my father, ^ my grand- 
father, -L great-grandfather, ^ great-great-grand- 
father, -^2 great-great-great-grandfather. 

lllllllll — 8 1 



86 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

Hence we have -^ to represent either victuals 
or the ' me.' " 

^' Noj that proves nothing/' said the phi- 
losophers. " You have gone back only five 
generations — not even to the dawn of history. 
There have been many prehistoric generations. 
And since the fractions representing the quan- 
tities of the ancestors decrease as you go back- 
ward, you'll probably get a larger fraction as 
the exponent of the ' me.' Try it for ten gen- 
erations."' 

So the mathematicians set to work again. 

yiTi"8~rT6"T'32"l"6¥~r T2~8 I "2 5~6 "I 5T2" » 

— 1 2 3 



10 24 — 1024- 



The chief calculator, a Paramoecium Cau- 
datum, added the column, and found that when 
ten generations were taken into the count, there 
was but iq\4^ of the self or of food in each in- 
dividual. They tried again with fifteen — with 
twenty generations, and obtained as the result 
iQ4^Q5^ 6 for the equivalent of the '^ me." 

Smaller and smaller it became, dwindling 
into the infinitesimal. If they could go back 
to the Infinite, they might find the self they 
sought — ^not otherwise. But it was not a 
SELF as they had loved to think it, but a 
wee little, invisible self. 



PROTOZOAN PHILOSOPHY. 8Y 

The pretty Yorticella, always so modest 
and self-deprecating, glanced timidly at the re- 
sult, then silently coiled her stem, hid among 
the mosses, and was seen no more. The 
haughty Stentors trembled in every limb. The 
philosophers and wiseacres were astounded 
and, for once in their lives, speechless. To 
think of being less than the smallest atom ! 
Nothing — absolutely nothing but the sum of 
one's ancestors ! One and all slunk away in 
consternation and chagrin, to ruminate upon 
the matter in private. 

Only the merry little Colej)s said : 
" I can't see what difference it makes who 
we are so we're here and have a good time. I 
would as lief be one of my ancestors as one 
of my descendants. What's the advantage of 
being posterity ? If I'm my grandfather, all I 
have to say is that I'm rather fond of the old 
gentleman. So here goes, old boy, for a Jolly 
roll." And off he went, twirling like a top 
gone crazy. 



But there is nothing in this world quite so 
delightful as the way in which philosophy can 
change its base when vanquished and driven 
from an untenable position. 



88 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

Hence it was not long before one after an- 
other of the wiseacres began to emerge from 
his seclusion in the mosses and to say : 

"Why, to be sure ! That is all right. 
Your figures deal with our material bodies 
alone. And we have always said — at least we 
have always meant — that the self was some- 
thing other than the body ; something higher 
and more potent ; something which gathers 
matter about it to make a body for its use." 

Gaining confidence from the sound of their 
own voices, they began to spell with larger let- 
ters and to declare : 

" The SELF is all. The body is nothing. 
What matter if our bodies are derived from 
our ancestors ? The me is the important part." 

And finally they said : " We liave no bodies. 
The Me, the Self, only extemporizes a body 
as it does pseudopodia. ^ We are only Self^ 
and have no manner of being, save in the 
sense of Self.' " ^ 

At this juncture an insignificant little Chi- 
lodon ventured to ask : 

"' But what if the Self is only the sum of 
our fathers' and grandfathers' selves ? What 
if the sense of self is inherent in matter ? " 

** Thanks, Mr. Howells. 



PEOTOZOAN PHILOSOPHY. 



89 













L.r f// ' 



(I 



'^^" / ;'^— - V.I V'^ ^ ' 1 

;'■ /''-.?-— /'7;// W /,, \\> 



'>M^I»^1~ \ 






x(v 



Fig. 25. — Floscularia cornuta (magnified). 



90 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

At which the philosophers turned upon it 
such looks of contempt, and hurled at it such a 
shower of scornful missiles, that it was glad to 
scurry away beyond their reach, remarking to 
itself as it went : 

" Well, anyhow, I have a sense of something 
or othe?' which tells me that I'd better hustle 
my father and grandfather around to the other 
side of this island before the philosophers crack 
my skull." 



CHAPTER y. 

WHEEL BEAEEES. 

I. 

{Rotifer a.) 

Dowis^ where the willows wave, and where 
they bend over and dip their branches into the 
pond, you will find the most beautiful species 
of the wheel animalcules. It will puzzle you, 
as it has the naturalists, whether to call them 
worms or crustaceans, for they have something 
resembling a crust or shell, yet you are sure to 
say, " This is a worm," when you see a Rotifer 
vulgaris walking by, making loops of his body 
as the "measure worm" does. (See Fig. 83.) 

But when you see a Brachionus or a Ptero- 
dina drawing his head and feet inside his shell, 
you will say, " This is some sort of a mud tur- 
tle." (See Figs. 26 and 34.) 

And when you see a Stephanosceros you will 
say : " Surely this is a stentor or a vaginicola, 

8 91 



92 



IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 



for he has a lorica. But how does he happen 
to wear plumes ? " 

You can find the common rotifers in your 
jardiniere^ or almost anywhere ; for the rotifer 





Fig. 26. — 1, Pterodina ; 2, a one-legged pedestrian. 



may be dried till he falls to pieces at a touch, 
and still retain vitality in the dry powder. 
And this rotifer pow^der may be carried in the 
air by the winds, and may come to life in any 
vessel of standing water which contains enough 
putrefying vegetable matter to nourish the 
young animals. You can keep the powder on 
hand and produce a crop of rotifers at pleasure. 
In this way you may play at being Gabriel and 
awakening the dead. So, too, by gathering 
earth from the bed of a pond and moistening 
it you may resurrect many kinds of beings. 



WHEEL BEARERS. 



93 



Or you can pour water containing microscopic 
animals tLrough sand, and, after drying the 
sand, put it away in a dry place, such as a 
covered urn on top of the bookcase, and when- 
ever you feel like having a resurrection morn 
you can pour water on the 
sand, and out of their graves 
will come trooping amoebae, bell 
animalculse, paramoecii, rotifers, 
and other sleepers. 

(But this is another thing 
which you must not tell to your 
lady callers ; for, if they would 
be shocked at the menagerie 




Fig. 27.— Wheel of tube wheel. 




Fig. 28.— Two-lipped 
tube wheel. 



in the drawing-room, they would be even more 
horrified at a graveyard in the library.) 

Dr. Mantell says a rotifer can be dried and 
revived twelve times, and Professor Owen re- 



94 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

lates that lie saw one revive which had been 
kept in dust for four years. Fontana says in 
two hours he revived one which had lain dried 
and motionless two and a haK years. Doyer 
says they endure exposure to a temperature 
ranging from 11° to US'" F. In dry sand they 
withstand a temperature of 150° ; in moist, 
can not revive if heated to 131°. 

Perhaps if rotifer seeds had been buried 
with Egyptian mummies, they would grow 
now, after three thousand years of entombment, 
like other seeds found with these rather over- 
ripe specimens of humanity. 

The rotifer will endure cold as well as des- 
iccation : A microscopist had a vase of water 
containing rotifers suspended from the bird- 
cage hook on his porch. One cold night the 
water froze, and the wind whipped the vase 
about until it broke loose and fell shattered to 
the ground. The next morning he found the 
ball of ice rolling around and put it in an 
empty fish tank, where it thawed. Putting 
a drop of this water under the microscope he 
observed twelve rotifers ; which number had 
increased to forty twenty-four hours later. 

Of one species they tell the amazing story 
that it can multiply to sixteen million in 
twelve days. 



WHEEL BEARERS. 95 

After that statement it is hardly necessary 
to say that young rotifers develop rapidly. In 
some species the egg grows, hatches, and be- 
comes a full-grown animal in less than one day. 
The ambitious young animal is so eager to get 
started in life that his cilia and jaws may be 
seen to work before he leaves the shell, or be- 
fore he leaves the parent in those that hatch 
before birth. 

This is a new process of reproduction ; for 
these animals do not multiply by dividing, but 
produce their young from eggs. This is also 
the first time we have noticed animals in which 
there is a distinction of sex. 

Ehrenberg asserts that the Philodina rose- 
ola deposits eggs in a group and remains a long 
time with the young ones. If so, family life 
and parental affection begin among these lowly 
denizens of the ponds. 

Romanes relates that he has seen a rotifer 
attach itself by its forceps to the side of a 
larger one, whereupon the larger one became 
very active, swinging about as if trying to 
dislodge its burden. Not succeeding, it laid 
hold of a weed with its own forceps and 
began a series of most extraordinary move- 
ments, throwing itself violently from side to 
side with such astonishing vigor and sudden- 



96 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

ness as threatened to break its own toes or 
wrench off its foot. After a trial of strength 
which w^as prodigious in proportion to the size 
of the animals, and w^hich lasted for several 
minutes, the smaller one was jerked loose. It 
returned to the conflict, but did not succeed in 
again establishing its hold. The entire scene, 
he says, was as like intelligent action as could 
well be imao;ined. 

But although they are so much more highly 
organized than any of the preceding animals, 
they are only one fortieth of an inch in length, 
and are entirely invisible to the naked eye. 
Yet, when seen through a microscope, they 
look so large and rush about so rapaciously 
that you find yourself thinking of them as 
ferocious beasts. 

Most of them are free swdmming and very 
active. Some, as the tripod wheel bearer, are 
long and slender, like Jointed grasses. 

Some, as the pterodina and brachionus, are 
rounded and vase-shaped. 

Some have two w^heels, like the H. vulgaris 
and the brachionus ; some have but one. 

Some have a leg or foot made of tubes 
that slide into each other like the sections 
of a telescope. (See brachionus and i?. vid- 
garis.) 



WHEEL BEARERS. 



97 



Otters, like the skeleton wheel bearer, have 
genume articulated joints to this leg, which 
bend like the joints of your arm. 

There are so many varieties that it is im- 
possible to describe the half of them here. 

The Tripod wheel hearer has a central tube 
into which slide anterior as well as posterior 
segments, so that the whole 
animal seems to be a series 
of telescopic tubes. It re- 
sembles some of the aquatic 
larvae, having a small head- 
like segment, two black or 
very dark-red eyes, and one 
antenna. The mastax or 
mouth is situated in the 
main or central tube. The 
posterior segments can be 
elongated until the animal 
bears little resemblance to 
the other families of Ro- 
tifertij and is so attenuated as to look like a fine 
thread. The last segment terminates in three 
slender, divergent toes from which it derives 
its name of tripod. The wheels are small and 
seldom in action, and it is perhaps the only 
rotifer to which the term ^^ indolent " can be 
applied. 




Fig. 29.— Tripod wheel 
bearer. 



98 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



In the Tube wheel (Fig. 30) ^ is a nearly ma- 
tured eggj wMch has a motion independent of 




Fig. 30. — Tube wheels : 1, retracted ; e, egg, 

the parent's, and is about ready to begin a separ 
rate existence ; doing this in a form resem- 
bling a stentor, having no wheel until it ceases 
roving and becomes sedentary. This rotifer has 
a single wheel, situated at the end of a bent 
tube, at the curve of which is a prong that is 



WHEEL BEARERS. 



99 



probably an antenna. At the posterior ex- 
tremity is a segmented foot terminated by two 
toes and a suction disk. The animal can bend 
freely. 

The Sheleton ivJieel bearer has a three-sided 
carapace, the angles of which, in some species, 
terminate in single spines. At the last Joint of 




Fig. 31. — Skeleton wheel bearer. 



the articulated foot are two toes which open 
and shut like the blades of a pair of scissors. 



100 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

When anchored by these toes, it can bend back- 
ward like a lady making an old-time courtesy. 
It swims with the toes closed and held behind 
horizontally, but it bends them down at a sharp 
angle when it desires to turn about or alter its 
course. 

The kStephanoceros is the beauty among roti- 
fers. In place of the wheels it has five plume- 
like arms which are held open to catch unwary 
creatures wandering that way. The arms close 
together, forming a basket with a hole at the 
bottom leading to the funnel and oesophagus. 
When a little creature is entrapped the stepha- 
noceros may be seen to swallow it with a gulp — 
that is, if your microscope is of sufficient power 
to reveal the rotifer himself ; for he is hard to 
detect, being very delicate and transparent and 
living; in a frail, colorless sheath. 

We have mentioned the walk of the JRotifer 
vulgaris. It also swims by the action of its 
cilia. It has a proboscis which can be extended 
beyond the wheels, and on this proboscis are 
two red eyes. When it swims it projects a long 
horn or antenna. It has two toes and a suction 
disk by which it often fastens itself, swinging 
around in a circle, as the pterodina, the skele- 
ton, and many of the rotifers do. In fact, so 
common and so useless is this performance 



WHEEL BEARERS. 



101 




Fig. 32. — Stephanoceros eichoriiii (magnified). 



102 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



among the rotifers, that it can only be re- 
garded as a sort of national game of the wheel 
bearers. 

The vulgaris is one of the viviparous roti- 
fers, and through the transparent, moving vis- 





Fig, 33. — 1, Rotifer vulgaris; 2, same walking; 3, young one. 

cera of the body, a well-developed young ani- 
mal may be seen. 

Rotifer vulgaris is, as his name implies, 
the commonest of the wheel animalcules. You 
will see him everywhere, and will recognize him 
by his measure- worm pace, and by his habit of 
bobbing up serenely Just when you don't want 
him, with an air of assurance which seems to 
say, " You sent for me, I believe." 



WHEEL BEARERS. 103 

So you and he will become thoroughly ac- 
quainted without further introduction, and we 
will spend our time with a rarer and more beau- 
tiful w^heel bearer. 



II. 

(Brachdonus.) 



BracJiionns pala^ when viewed from the 
front, looks like an elegant fragile cup with 
bulging sides. From one side of the rim pro- 
ject four points, the middle two of which are 
slender and sharp as needles. The under side 
of the cup is flattened and ends at the rear in 
two blunt points, between which the grooved, 
proboscislike foot is protruded. 

This rotifer has two large wheels, which 
seem to revolve rapidly, giving it the appear- 
ance of possessing great power. Between the 
wheels is a ciliated throat or funnel leading to 
the mouth, which, as in all rotifers, is situated 
inside the body back of the funnel. 

This isn't the usual place for a mouth, but 
you see this is Nature's first experiment at 
mouth-making, and she hasn't yet learned the 
best location for one. 



104 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 






This is a genuine mouth, or masticating 
room, although so oddly placed. It consists of 
a pair of reddish-brown, club-shaped teeth and 

a flat plate or anvil. 

/;'m |;\ .v^^^^rt|a, The food rests upon 

teeth act as ham- 
mers to pound it 
fine. You may see 
the way in which 
they work by tak- 





FiG. 34. — Brachionus, 



Fig. 35.— Mouth of 
Brachionus. 



ing scissors by the blades, and opening and 
shutting them so as to make the eyes of the 
scissors come together with the regularity of 
clockwork. In shape the eyes of the scissors 
resemble the teeth. You must not laug:h at ISTa- 



WHEEL BEARERS. 105 

tiire because her first teeth were hammers, for 
they were a great invention in their day. 

The mouth is called a mastax. Back of it 
is a o:ullet leading; to a stomach and an intes- 
tine which ends in a cloaca or canal for the 
expulsion of unassimilated food. Under the 
posterior portion of the body is a transversely 
grooved, flexible foot, which you are sure to 
mistake for a tail, because it whips about, re- 
minding one of the tiger lashing his tail. But 
this appendage is a true foot, because it grows 
out from the ventral surface, while a tail ter- 
minates the dorsal surface, and because at the 
end of this foot are two toes which are used 
as forceps to grasp weeds and roots so as to 
anchor the rotifer. 

The brachionus's use of this foot is often 
very comical. It will bend the foot forward, 
place it, push the body forward, lift the foot, 
and again set it forward, propelling the body 
with considerable force, and giving itself the 
grotesque appearance of a creature stalking 
about on one leg. 

You see. Nature wasn't quite satisfied with 
the bristlelike legs of the Euplotes, and was 
trying to make legs of flesh. But she made 
the funny mistake of thinking one leg w^as 
enou2!:h, if it had two toes at the end of it. 



106 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

The brachionus wheels up to an object, 
swings round, catches hold with its forceps, 
pushes itself out to the length of its foot, pro- 
trudes its disks, and begins to rotate its wheels, 
— except that the wheels do not actually re- 
volve. The cilia merely fall over and pick 
themselves up in regular order so rapidly that 
all you see is a dark wave traveling around, 
which makes it seem that the disks are rotating. 

The brachionus is the most ferocious of all 
the animals we have yet met. When it rushes 
forward, tail-like foot lashing its sides and jaws 
extended to seize its prey, it presents a truly 
formidable appearance, not to be expected in 
a creature so fragile and microscopic. There 
is a suggestion of the beasts of the jungle in 
the satisfaction with which it pounces upon its 
victims. 

The shell or carapace is of palest amber 
color and so transparent that every organ of the 
body may be seen through it. At times large 
oval bodies may be observed inside the cara- 
pace or attached to the outside near the top of 
the foot. These are the eggs. They are soft 
when exuded, but afterward form a hard shell 
which is so thin that the movement of the 
young one is visible through it. As it nears 
the period for hatching, the red eye appears, 



WHEEL BEARERS. 107 

tlie ciliated disks begin to experiment to see if 
they are in good working order, and the jaws 
go through the motions of grinding food. The 
baby rotifer is trying its teeth before it has any 
food to eat. Finally, he becomes impatient of 
his prison walls, and writhes about till the shell 
cracks, — the top flying back as though on a 
hinge. Then the little rotifer glides out, selects 
a good site for a home, anchors, and begins to ply 
his wheels like an old and experienced person. 

Young animals have the advantage of young 
human beings in this respect : they do not need 
to learn how to live. A rotifer can wheel, a 
chick can pick up food, a young robin can 
build its nest the first time it tries, without 
having to go through a tedious apprenticeship 
as a child does before it can even stand alone. 

A Mistress Rotifer carries handsome, large 
ews when she means to hatch 2:irl rotifers, and 
small ones when she intends to hatch boys. 
And she considers girls so superior that she 
will not have boy eggs in the same filling of 
the incubator. The boy rotifers are smaller, 
have no carapace, no mouth, no spines, no Jaws, 
no stomach, no wheels, and only one circle of 
long, strong cilia at the front. They move 
swiftly and have but a brief life. 



108 I^ BROOK AND BAYOU. 



III. 

Many boys kill or abuse tlie lower animals 
because they do not appreciate how wonderful 
they are, and never think that birds and dogs 
and cats enjoy and suffer ahnost as much as 
people do. 

A boy of this sort was one day raising a 
stone to throw at a frog which sat croaking on 
a log above the ^vater. 

" Don't hit him," said a bystander ; " he's a 
relative of yours." 

" He ? A relative of mine? " asked the boy 
in amazement. 

" Yes, you belong to the same great family 
of vocalists. He is the lowest and you are the 
highest member. Did you never think how 
silent the fish and clams and snails and all these 
water animals below the frog are ? He is the 
first being with a voice. His croak is the. 
first step in the evolution of the English lan- 
guage. The frog is the first thing that learned 
to talk. And he is related to you in other 
ways : All these animals below him breathe 
water and live in water; he begins life as a 
tadpole, voiceless, living in and breathing 
water ; but by and by he climbs up out of it 



WHEEL BEARERS. 



109 



and breathes air, living on land and talking in 
a language of his own as you do." 

" Well ! " said the astonished boy, " You're 
rather a toothless old chap, Grandfather Frog, 
and your voice is so cracked I can't understand 




Fig. 36. — Sword bearer. 



what you say, but I think, instead of stoning 
you, I'd better make your acquaintance." And 
he squatted on a stone with his chin between 
his knees in an attitude very like the frog's, and 
began to watch the croaker intently. 

And, like the boy, you will feel new interest 
in the wheel animalcule, and will say, " I'm glad 
to make your acquaintance. Uncle Rotifer," 



110 IN BROOK AN'D BAYOU. 

when you learn that, way down in the scale of 
life, here in this fragile little creature, entirely 
invisible without a microscope, there is to be 
found a genuine brain and a true eye. 

(How far back we mortals must go to find 
the beginnings of us !) 

In front of and above the mastax of the 
brachionus is a large mass of diffuse nervous 
matter, a hrain ; and situated like a wart upon 
it is a crystalline lens, a square eye of crimson 
color and of high refracting power. That the 
rotifer uses this eye is shown by his bending 
his body in the direction of an approaching 
morsel of food and plying his wheels with re- 
newed energy. 

This also proves that he uses his brain ; 
for the more enero;etic action of the wheels at 
prospect of reward show^s intelligence. So, too, 
does the fact that he will depress the rim of 
the funnel on the side nearest the object he is 
trying to secure. He does this with the evi- 
dent purpose of making it easier for the food 
to slip over the rim into the funnel. 

But if we fi.nd such pronounced intelligence 
in the rotifer, we may know that intelligence 
had its beginnings far below the rotifer. When 
you come to study mineralogy and see with 
what care and exactness each molecule selects 



WHEEL BEARERS. Ill 

just the niclie for which it is adapted, or when 
you study chemistry and see with what in- 
telligent preference the atoms of oxygen pass 
by those of nitrogen to eagerly unite with 
those of ii'on, you will say, " Father Molecule 
and Grandfather Atom, I am delighted to claim 
relationship with such brainy and interesting 
people as you." For you will know then that 
the roots of you reach down through frog and 
rotifer to plant and mineral, and that in very 
truth you were made, or begtm, ages and ages 
ago, " out of the dust of the earth." 



lY. 

The waters are quiet, the sun is shining, 
and everything is smiling in placid beauty, as 
though there were neither death nor misfortune 
in this watery world. 

A beautiful green creature, knobbed all 
over and shaped like a mulberry, comes 
through the water smoothly rolling on its axis, 
dreaming that life is a summer sea. 

Its real name is Syncrypta volvox^ but we 
will call it Jonah Volvox. It seems to be rev- 
eling in the exhilaration of motion, to be full 
of the joie de vie, which is what the French say 



112 IN BROOK a:n^d bayou. 

when life seems so exquisitely delightful that 
merely to be alive fills their cup of happiness 
to overflowing. It swims smoothly along, all 
unaw^are that in the little bay just around the 
point of the cape made by the mosses a power- 
ful brachionus is plying his engines, spreading 
his ciliated net, and saying, like the spider to 
the fly : 

'' Will you walk into my parlor ? Do walk 
in ! You are my especial favorite of all the 
delicacies I meet." 

Jonah Yolvox sees and hears nothing of 
all this. All unsuspecting, he rolls along, 
rounds the point of the cape, and is caught in 
the whirlpool made by the rotating wheels. 
Round and round he goes, a helpless captive. 
No cry of his making, poor thing ! can bring 
the outside world to his rescue. His despair 
is unheeded. He travels in narrower and 
narrower circles, and at last shoots straight 
down between the ciliated wheels into the 
ciliated gulf. 

Now the sides of this tubular gulf contract 
to prevent his escape and to force him down 
onto the mastax. The jaws of the mastax gape 
wide and try to close upon him. But he is too 
large and too round. He slips away. Again 
the walls contract and the jaws gape wdder. 



WHEEL BEARERS. 113 

but can not grasp him. Again and again, with 
increasing vigor, the jaws try to seize him, but 
each time he eludes them. 

At length the rotifer in disgust spews him 
out of his mouth and casts him beyond the 
outer eddies of the whirlpool. 

Now you wonder how it was with Jonah 
Volvox? and whether he had to be taken to 
the hospital, the morgue, or to the under- 
takers ? 

He was taken to none of these. He was 
not even hurt, though he did look rather dis- 
couraged as he rested among the weeds at a 
safe distance, pondering on the ups and downs 
of life. 

He seemed to be wondering just what had 
happened to him, and how it all came about, 
and what could be the meaning of it. 

After a time he took courage again and 
said : " What's the difference ? We must take 
things as they come, and life is pretty jolly, 
after all. So here we go again ! " And away 
he went, smoothly gliding and revolving, as 
though nothing had happened. 

But now it chanced that Jonah's little son 
had been swimming along after him, trying, as 
boys wdll, to do everything their elders do ; 
and while his father was resting among the 



114 l^r BROOK AND BAYOU. 

reeds on tlie opposite side, meditating on the 
ways of life and forgetting all about the little 
fellow, the child swam round the point of the 
cape where he had last caught a glimpse of his 
father, and he too disappeared in Charybdis 
and was never heard of more. No ear caught 
his faint shriek of terror as he shot down the 
ciliated funnel ; and as it contracted, the jaws 
opened, and, finding him small enough, took 
him in, closing tight behind him. 

Then he was laid upon the anvil and the 
two hammers began to beat upon him, pound- 
ing him into very tender beefsteak, such as 
tickles the palate of the brachionus. When he 
was sufliciently pommeled, he was forced down 
the gullet into the stomach, and, when the rich 
juices were extracted from him, all that was 
left of his battered form was expelled from the 
cloaca. 

But even his parents and nearest relatives 
would never have recognized those dry bones 
as the mangled remains of poor little Jonah 
Volvox, Jr, 



CHAPTEE VI. 

CRUSTACEANS. 

It may be that Nature herself saw the gro- 
tesqueness of having a creature stumping about 
on one leg. At any rate, she seems to have 
thought best to try making animals with sev- 
eral legs. She also wanted to invent some sort 
of lungs. So she did one of the funniest things 
yet : She made some little animals called CriiS' 
taceans (because they have a crust or shell), 
and gave them a great many legs which they 
can draw up inside the shell when it is bi- 
valve ; and she put the lungs into the front 
feet of some. 

This is why they are called " Branchiopods/' 
or breath-footed. 

Some of the crustaceans, as the daphnia and 
cypris, have a thin bivalve shell- — that is, a shell 
of two parts or valves which open as though 
there were a hinge between them ; others, as 
the branchipus, canthocamptus, etc., have a shell 

115 



116 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

of chitin arranged in rings or somites like the 
abdominal segments of the lobster, the insect, 
and the spider. These bodies of chitin are usu- 
ally composed of twenty-one somites, and would 
be unwieldy except that the segments can slide 
into each other as telescopic sections do, only 
these overlap more readily on the under side so 
that the animal can bend downward but not 
upward. Most joints have a habit of bending 
in one direction, like those of your elbow and 
knee. It is only now and then that some " lim- 
ber Jack " is found who can make his arm curve 
forward and his leg curve backward ; and it is 
only occasionally that one of the crustaceans, as 
the canthocamptus, can throw his heels over 
his back and hit his head. 

The children of many crustaceans are built 
on an entirely different pattern from the par- 
ents, having a nauplius form (see Cyclops, Fig. 
39, a) with a body less elongated and lacking in 
some of the limbs with which the adult is pro- 
vided. In some cases, however. Nature favored 
the young at the start ^vith the whole twenty- 
one somites, afterward causing some of the 
seenients to coalesce so as to form one out of 
two. Occasionally, among the Pliyllopoda and 
Branchiopoda one finds as many as sixty so- 
mites, and each somite is supposed to have 



CRUSTACEANS. HY 

a pair of legs or other appendages belong- 
ing to it. 

Now it would seem — of course we w^ould not 
think of criticising; Nature — but it looidd seeiii 
that to jump from a creature with but one leg, 
like the rotifer, to a creature with one hundred 
and twenty legs, was a feat to be expected 
from a professional athlete rather than from a 
staid old dame, like Nature. And it appears 
that Nature herself thought she w^as carrying 
matters rather too far, for she turned some of 
the anterior appendages into mouth and sense 
organs, caused the posterior appendages to 
dwindle in size, and finally she eliminated 
some of them entirely, so that the poor animal 
would not have to spend quite all its time in 
thinking which of the one hundred and twenty 
legs to set ahead next. 

But the anterior appendages do not seem to 
be entirely pleased with the new duties to 
W'hich they are assigned. They change about, 
acting restless, as though they had not made 
up their minds w^hether to settle down to a 
permanent occupation, or, indeed, whether to 
locate at all ; for the legs which w^ere turned 
into antennae are, in some species, organs of 
touch ; in others, organs of locomotion ; in 
others, they are nurseries for the young. The 



118 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

eyes of some species are sessile ; tliose of others 
grow on stalks as though they were still deter- 
mined to be legs ; and those of others refuse 
to exist at all. Some of the appendages which 
were made subservient to the mouth, the max- 
illipeds or feet jaws, try to revert into feet ; for 
while in some of the crustaceans the mouth 
organs extend to the ninth somite, in others 
they extend only to the seventh, the eighth 
and ninth refusing to perform the functions of 
nutrition, and preferring to assist their owner 
in getting about in the world. 

The young Crustacea have as many odd cra- 
dles as they have odd shapes to their bodies. 
The young canthocamptus rocks on the waves 
in a sack attached to the body of the parent; 
the mysis lives in a pouch like a young kanga- 
roo ; the crabs are glued, in a mass similar to a 
spider's ball, to the legs of the mother ; the arc- 
turus is cradled in the branching horns or an- 
tennae of the old one ; the daphnia is carried 
under the coat on the back of the mother ; 
while the prodocerus lives in a genuine little 
bird's nest down deep in the sea. 



CRUSTACEANS. 



119 



{Daphnia.) 

lu tlie fall, when most of tlie aquatic vege- 
tation is dead and the water of the ponds is 
clear, a great many small round specks may be 
seen jumping and jerking about. 

One of these animals is the Daphnia which 
has an oval bivalve shell and, usually, a spine 




Fig. 87. — Daphnia pidex. 

above the middle of the posterior portion, 
though this, like the teeth of higher animals, 
is generally absent in old specimens. Through 
the lower opening, between the two valves of 



120 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

the shell, you will often catch a glimpse of 
something protruded and withdrawn with such 
lightning rapidity that you are not sure it is 
not an optical illusion until some time when 
the daphnia is lazy or is nearly exhausted for 
lack of water and fails to withdraw this object, 
and then you perceive that it is a foot or claw, 
tipped with bristles, and that it is the action of 
this claw which gives the animal its irregular. 
Jerky motion ; for, instead of sailing or crawl- 
ing or swimming along, the daphnia Mcks itself 
along by pushing this foot out behind. When 
necessary it uses this brushlike claw for scav- 
enger and police duty. It welcomes all comers, 
protozoan, ^^^^ vegetable matter, and even par- 
ticles of poison coloring matter, packing them 
in till the vestibule in front of its mouth is 
full ; then it opens the door and samples them. 
If it does not like their flavor, it kicks the 
whole mass out and sweeps the vestibule clean 
with its broom. In front of this claw are many 
smaller, fringelike feet, which are seldom pro- 
truded from the shell, but which move regular- 
ly with a breathing motion. Above these feet, 
about midway along the animal, is an alimen- 
tary canal ending in a cloaca. The canal, feet, 
and claw seem to be entirely free from the 
shell, and are all, at frequent intervals, bent 



CRUSTACEANS. 121 

down and forward, leaving the back and rear 
of the shell empty. This habit distinguishes 
the daphnia from others of these small crus- 
taceanSj none of which move the claw except 
downward and backward. Above the canal, 
close under the top of the shell and near the 
head, is a rapidly pulsating heart, which sends 
colorless blood through the body two or three 
hundred times a minute. 

The head of the daphnia is a large, rounded 
beak, at the extremity of which is an enormous 
eye, of a color so dark green as to appear black. 
It is turned by three paii^s of muscles, and is 
the first movable eye w^e have seen. From either 
side the neck grows something you would call 
stag's horns. These are the large, branched an- 
tennae, round and Jointed like a bamboo pole. 

Along the back, under the shell and above 
the body, is the brood cavity in which there 
are sometimes eight or ten eggs. This is the 
incubator, in which the eggs are hatched and 
where the young are cared for until they are 
fitted for an independent life. 

If the children are too ambitious to see the 
world in their youth, the mother promptly 
kicks them back into this nursery ; for the 
young are sprawling, helpless things, having 
no shell, no alimentary canal, and only three 



122 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

pairs of feet, and the mother thinks no one is 
fitted to appear in polite society until she has 
at least ten feet. 

This is one of the creatures that h^ve sum- 
mer and winter eggs. All summer there are 
none but lady Daphnise, and they lay the sum- 
mer eggs and rear the " summer girls." When 
haying and harvest are over^ about the time 
that you begin to watch for the falling leaves 
and dropping nuts of autumn, the lazy gentle- 
men Daphni^e come pushing their way through 
the water mth an air of great importance. 
They prefer the winter time, when there is 
not much to do except skate about under 
the ice. 

When spring work begins again, only one 
kind of Daphnise are to be found, the gentle- 
men having taken their departure., 



11. 

{Cypris.) 



There is a little kidney-shaped Cypris^ 
which, when green and lying quiet with feet 
drawn into the shell and its house securely 
locked, may easily be taken for a leaf of duck- 



CRUSTACEANS. 123 

weed. The deception is still more perfect when 
the shell is ornamented with mosses and filigree 
in the shape of diatoms whose shells are at- 
tached to the cypris, making a fringe around it. 

When the cypris travels it opens the two 
valves of its shell just far enough to permit the 
protrusion of the two pairs of antennae and the 
four long, hair-tufted clusters of bristles which 
it palnis off upon us as feet. It swims rapidly 
by jerking these feet back and forth. When 
molested it quickly mthdraws them and sinks 
to the bottom. When trying to walk on these 
pencils of bristles it wobbles ludicrously. 

One pair of antennae is long, jointed, and 
feathery, and is used for swimming ; the other 
is stout and footlike. 

The cypris deposits twenty-four eggs in a 
mass, afterward taking each egg singly and 
spending about thirty minutes in gluing it to 
vegetation. When the little one hatches as a 
nauplius with three pairs of appendages, it has 
a house already on its back, and in four and a 
half days it can not be distinguished from its 
parents. 

When the water of the pond dries, the cy- 
pris, foUoAving the example of other crusta- 
ceans, hides in the mud. It evinces great wis- 
dom in so doing, for if all the moisture 

10 



124 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

evaporates and the mud becomes dust the little 
creature is sure to die ; and then, you see, if 
it had not taken the precaution to bury itself 
before dying, it would have to go unsepulchered 
because all its friends would be dead too, and 
there would be no one left to dig its grave. 
But if the rains come before the mud is baked, 
all the cypris has to do is to creep out of its 
hiding place, rub its one eye, and pretend it 
has only been taking a nap. 

The eggs survive in the dust and heat, so 
when the rainy season comes the pond is soon 
full of lively cyprides, which are green, brown, 
and dull white, but none of them very interest- 
ing, — perhaps because they are so omnipresent. 



III. 

THE FAIRY SHRIMP. 
[BrancMpus.) 

There are eome crustaceans that are truly 
charming in dress and manner, and such a one 
is the Branchijpus^ or Fairy Shrimp. (See fron- 
tispiece.) 

Very early in the spring they are to be 
found in the shallow pools formed by melting 



CRUSTACEANS. 125 

snow. From such a pool, and in no very mys- 
terious manner, a company of these fairies used 
every season to find their way into a house in 
a certain little city of the western prairies. 
They always came in a bright tin pan, within 
which the beautiful pearl and pink creatures 
swam on their backs, gently rowing along with 
their eleven pairs of swimming feet uppermost. 
They were a pretty sight ; and the thought of 
them is still associated with that of early flow- 
ers and the budding freshness of springtime. 
But the pan had to be kept in a cool place, or 
presently the fairies vanished ; for they can not 
endure heat, and by the middle of May they 
are a story that is told. The pool is full of 
them one day, and, if the sun comes out warm, 
the next day they are fled, leaving no trace 
behind — except for the zoologist, who can rec- 
ognize their eggs. 

They are the largest animals we have yet 
noticed, being sometimes an inch in length, 
with stout bodies, large heads, and very large 
eyes. In front the male has two unequal ap- 
pendages, and on one is a bristlelike claw. 
(See frontispiece.) The female carries a single 
egg sack, which is a modification of the eleventh 
pair of feet. 

In this fairy Nature seems to be making 



126 I^" BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

another of her experiments. Witli the excep- 
tion of the daphnia'Sj eyes thus far have been 
dim, and would not turn so as to look in va- 
rious directions. So Nature has set the eyes of 
the fairy shrimp on stalhs^ that they may look 
about the world more readily. You see, she 
made several experiments with eyes before she 
achieved man's eye. In the first place, there 
was the dim sense organ of the euglena, placed 
flat in the front part of the body, with no sock 
et, and entirely unable to turn or to see. It 
could barely distinguish light from darkness. 
Then there were better eyes, like those of the 
rotifer, but still they could not turn and could 
see only what lay in one direction. Then came 
the stalked eyes of the branchipus and its kin- 
dred, the lobsters and crayfish. But these eyes 
are likely to be broken off, standing out from 
the body as they do. So Nature tried making 
sessile eyes — that is, eyes lying mostly in sock- 
ets so as to be protected by the body ; and she 
gave to some a transparent lid, and to some a 
movable lid to close over and further protect 
them. The first of these eyes were placed on 
opposite sides of the head, like those of a fish or 
a robin. But these were still not satisfactory, 
for the two eyes do not see the same things, 
one looking to the right, the other to the left, 



CRUSTACEANS. 127 

— you know how a robin has to turn its head 
to see what lies in front of it ? At last, Na- 
ture made the large, movable, lid-shielded eyes 
of man, which can look forward and can focus 
on the same object ; and she set them in a 
head supported by a slender neck, so that the 
head may turn and allow the eyes to sweep 
the whole circle of the horizon. 

And now, perhaps, she need make no more 
experiments ; for she has joined with these eyes 
a brain which can work out her experiments 
for her. When there is need of an eye which 
can see more minutely, the brain invents a mi- 
croscope or a pair of spectacles; and when 
there is need of an eye that can see millions of 
millions of miles into space, the brain invents 
a telescope. 

IV. 

( Cantliocamptits.) 

You have been waiting for the clown to 
make his appearance, and here he comes tum- 
bling into the ring, one moment traveling on 
his side and the next bundling along with head 
and heels touching each other. He is a great 
contortionist, ha\dng a body made up of jointed 
segments so that he can bend it readily. 



128 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



If you don't use your opera glass you will 
think he is a tiny worm wriggling along, but if 
you do use it he will appear for all the world 
like the gentleman in Fig. 38. He has one 
eye, two pairs of antennae, and five pairs of 
legs, but, as in most of these minute crusta- 
ceans, the antennae are of more service than the 




Fig. 38. — Cantliocamptus, 



legs in swimming, though under the micro- 
scope he seems to propel himself by vigorous 
flexions of his tail. 

His body is largest in front, and is long, 
narrow, and shaped like an Indian club, except 
that the under side is flattened. He usually 
clothes himself in a single garment of dull, dirty 
hue, but sometimes wears pink or flesh-color. 



CRUSTACEANS. 129 

Our clown seems to be of rather an irrita- 
ble disposition. Two of them once became 
penned in by threadlike roots Avhich happened 
to be in the ring. They rushed this way and 
that, trying to escape, flexing their heels over 
their heads angrily, seeming much distressed 
at their situation. At length one, evidently 
blaming the other for his capture, seized his 
companion and hung on like a dog, apparently 
by his teeth. It was a savage grip, and re- 
laxed only when the water on the slide dried, 
and death came to the relief of both. 

Like misers, they carry a bag of gold ; but 
this kind of gold is made into transparent balls 
or eggs, and is borne in a sack attached to their 
bodies and floating beside them. These eggs 
hatch in the sack, for this clown of a cantho- 
camptus and his kindred, the branchipus and 
Cyclops, do not wear a shell nor have a brood 
cavity as the daphnia does. They dress in 
tights made of a thin crust like that w^orn by 
the lobster and crayfish. 

You w^ould never know that the children 
belonged to the family if you should meet 
them, for they do not resemble their parents in 
form or feature. In about two days they molt, 
or peel off their tights, and this cast-oif garment 
carries with it the cases of the limbs and plumes 



130 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

even to the most delicate hairs. But the young 
one that comes out has all these again, and often 
new limbs, and each succeeding time a shape 
more like its parents', until after several 'molt- 
ings it comes out a full-grown perfect cantho- 
camptus. 

A curious thing about this is, that if a limb 
be broken or torn from one of these young ani- 
mals, it recovers that limb when it molts the 
next time. 

One might almost think the crustaceans 
knew this, from the readiness some of them 
evince in parting w^ith portions of their anat- 
omy; for, if you lightly touch the Joints of 
their legs with a pin, they instantly discard the 
lower Joints. 

And this is something which we may apply 
to human beings ; for perhaps, if we have lost 
arms or legs or even mental faculties, or even 
if we never possessed those mental faculties, 
but have been deficient in them as tke young 
cantkocamptus is in limbs, we may recover all 
we have -lost and obtain yet more when we 
molt, — or as we usually express it, when we 
die and go to heaven. 

There are some people who wish they could 
overcome deatk and preserve their present 
bodies forever. But you see this would be a 



CRUSTACEANS. 131 

disadvantage, for tliey could never recover the 
amputated limbs nor the lost minds if they 
didn't slouo-h off this outo-rown sheath of a 
body ; neither could they acquire faculties in 
which they have ahvays been wanting. 

So, too, it seems that it would be a disad- 
vantage for us to molt but once, and then to 
remain forever and forever in the next stage, as 
people used to think we would ; for that would 
mean that we ceased to advance after this one 
molting which we call death. 

And don't you think it would be better to 
keep right on growing and molting, acquiiing 
new faculties each time like the young crusta- 
ceans, and each time coming out of the old case 
more and more nearly resembling our one per- 
fect Parent and Creator ? 

"But what has this to do with cantho- 
campti or cy clops or diaptomi ? " Why, this : 
they have taught us what a blessing death is. 



{Diaptomus.) 

The most brilliant creature of all is the scar- 
let DiaptomuSj with its six thoracic segments, 
its five narrow abdominal segments, its brush- 



132 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

like tail of two parts, its jointed, feathery feet, 
and its two antennae as long as the body. The 
antennae are jointed and cnrve gracefully back- 
ward when the animal swims. The heart may 
be seen to beat under the middle of the cara- 
pax. The legs are made of flattened segments, 
and so feathered as to resemble palm plants. 

The female carries one external ovary or 
egg sack. The diaptomus is one tenth of an 
inch in length, and, like the branchipus, is a 
lover of cool water, being found only in fall or 
early spring, and making its home in shallow 
pools. The one most common with us is red ; 
but there are those that wear white, others 
with robes of purple, and others that wear blue 
and have antennae tipped with bright purple. 

It might be mistaken for a cyclops, from 
which it may be distinguished by its unusually 
long, single pair of antennae, the cyclops hav- 
ing two pairs of shorter ones. It has a comely 
figure, but its chief beauty lies in the brilliant 
color which extends through antennae, legs, and 
body, even to the tip of its tail. 



CRUSTACEANS. 133 

VI. 
THE ONE-EYED GIANT OF THE MILL POND. 

{Cydo2:)s.) 

There is an old poem that the Greeks 
used to love which tells of the trials and dan- 
gers that beset the hero Ulysses — or Odysseus, 
as they called him — as he journeyed homeward 



^H^^^Vx. 




Fig. 39. — Cyclops quadricornis : a, young. 

from the Trojan war. It took Ulysses twenty 
years to reach his home, and he had so many 
narrow escapes the wonder is that he ever 
reached it at all. 

On one occasion in particular he came very 
near to death. As the story goes, his ships 
were swept by storms against a strange coast. 
Ulysses and his companions went ashore to ex- 



134 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

plore the land, discovered a cave, which they 
entered, and, finding presses full of cheeses, 
vats full of milk, and casks of wine, they 
feasted and made merry, not knowing that the 
cave was the abode of a fierce and terrible 
Cyclops, a huge giant who had one fiery eye 
set in the middle of his forehead. At sun- 
down the giant came home, drove his flocks 
into the cave and shut the door. The door of 
the cave was a rock, so immense that Ulysses 
knew he and his men would be powerless to 
remove it. He saw that they were prisoners, 
and the giant looked so terrible and roared so 
frightfully that the captives shrank trembling 
into the farthest recesses of the cavern. When 
the Cyclops had milked his flocks he built a 
great fire, and approaching Ulysses and his men 
he reached forth his hands, seized two of the 
men by the heels, swung them around, cracked 
their heads together, and soon had them broil- 
ing over the fire. Their terrified friends stood 
by helpless as the giant crunched their bones 
with his huge teeth. The next morning he 
killed and ate two more in the same horrible 
manner. When he drove his flocks to pasture 
he took good care to put the rock over the 
opening of the cave so that his captives should 
not escape. 



CRUSTACEANS. 135 

That night he killed two more, and washed 
them down his throat with such quantities of 
wine that he fell into a drunken sleep. While 
he slept, Ulysses and his men bored out his eye 
with a sharpened timber which they had heated 
red hot in the fire that broiled the last two of 
their unfortunate companions. 

But, though he could no longer see, the Cy- 
clops w^as wily, and he sat by the door of the 
cave, stretching his arms across and feeling the 
backs of the sheep as he let them out in the 
morning so that the prisoners might not escape 
by riding out on the sheep's backs. 

So Ulysses and the remaining men were 
obliged to cling fast to the wool on the under 
side of the sheep and be carried out in that 
way. 

And simply because it has one red eye in 
the middle of its forehead, the name of Cyclops 
has been given to a wee little " oar-footed " 
crustacean, not more than one sixteenth of an 
inch in length, and not at all resembling a 
fierce and terrible giant. It seems a very 
happy, lively little cyclops, constantly skipping 
about, and keeping its feet incessantly paddling 
the water. 

The Cyclops has no heart, the blood being 



136 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

kept in circulation by the churning motion of 
the intestine. It has four pairs of branched 
legs, and mandibles and maxillae fitted for bit- 
ing. It feeds upon infusoria and smaller crus- 
taceans, at times maintaining a catlike quiet 
till the animals collect about it and then sud- 
denly pouncing upon one. 

But, unlike the giant, it lives not so much 
to eat as to be eaten, for it furnishes the prin- 
cipal supply of food for the smaller fishes and 
the aquatic larvae. Even the larger inhabit- 
ants of the sea feed upon it, so that when fish- 
ermen and whalers see schools of cyclops they 
get their nets and harpoons ready, knowing 
that their prey is at hand. Hundreds of square 
miles of ocean are sometimes filled with these 
little one-eyed creatures, for they are immense- 
ly reproductive. Each female carries two egg 
sacks, which contain from forty to fifty eggs, 
and she brino;s forth from eis;ht to ten broods. 
The young soon become parents, so that a 
cyclops may become the progenitor of 4,500,- 
000,000 in one year. On the 28th of Febru- 
ary, 1896, while the ponds were still covered 
with ice and there was only a narrow border 
of water extending a foot or two from the 
shore, a close observer might have seen great 
numbers of cyclops darting about close to the 



CRUSTACEANS. 13Y 

beach, and, cold as it was, tliey carried weight 
like John Gilpin, "a bottle dangling at each 
side " ; for the egg sacks were heavily laden 
and the young had already begun to hatch. 
The bottles are pear-shaped, sometimes dark 
green, sometimes amber-colored. The young 
hatch in the sacks, and may be seen moving 
inside the eggshells. But "like parent, like 
child," is an adage that doesn't seem trae at 
first in the case of the nauplius of the cyclops, 
for the young are quite unlike the parent, hav- 
ing to molt several times before they attain the 
same shape and appendages. 

The eye of the adult cyclops is really a 
cluster of eyes, so placed as to appear to be a 
single one. 

The eye of the nauplius looks like two tri- 
angles Joined at their apexes, and resembles no 
other eye that ever was on land or sea. 

In the matter of diet the cyclops is like 
the giant of the Greek fable, for it is a regular 
cannibal, devouring beings like itself, and even 
eating its own young; w^hich is perhaps a good 
thing, since there are thirty species of them, 
and even though they do eat their kind, there 
are plenty left, and they may be found all the 
world round and all the year round. They 
abound in all stagnant pools, in the water 



138 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

whicli the Londoner drinks, in that from Cro- 
ton River which quenches the thirst of the 
resident of New York, and there is a little 
fellow skipping about in the pitcher of Spring- 
field (Illinois) well water that stands on my 
table as I write. This one is a pale little fel- 
low, coming from so far below the sunlight; 
but it has egg sacks, as I can tell without a 
microscope, because it ends abruptly at the 
rear, as if cut square off, instead of tapering 
toward the tail. 



CHART IV 




Hydra, 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HUNGEY GLOVE. 
[Hych'oe.) 

As late as November 10, 1889, I dipped 
some water and duckweed from my favorite 
pond and put it in a glass Jar. An old man in 
charge of the city waterworks near by, who 
had many times watched this canning of slough 
water with an expression of wondering disap- 
probation, at length took courage to come for- 
ward and investigate the matter. "I've been 
puzzling myself over what you do with that," 
he said. 

" I put it under the microscope and study 
the animals in it." 

" Animals ? Taddypoles and sich ? " he 
asked, incredulously. 

"No, much smaller ones. Look through 
this jar toward the light. Those specks dart- 
ing and jerking about are cypris, daphnia, and 
Cyclops." 

11 139 



140 IN BROOK AXD BAYOU. 

" Be them dirt specks animals ? Now, do 
tell ! " 

"Dirt specks always fall to the bottom. 
They can't dart uj) toward the top and side- 
wise. And in here there are probably tiny 
hollow tubes, called Hydrce^ with fingers or 
tentacles at the end which look like a very 
small kid glove rolled together so that the 
thumb and little finger touch. Although they 
don't look much like one, they always remind 
me of a glove, because they can be turned 
wrong side out, fingers and all, and then turned 
back again without injury, just as a glove can. 
And there are hosts of other animals, shaped 
like bells and cups and boats, which are en- 
tirely invisible." 

"Live animals that can be turned wrong 
side out and others that you can't see at all ! 
Now just see that ! " remarked the old fellow 
in growing amazement. "And tlienibS what 
you git it for ! I wondered if you could be 
udri! of it," he said, with evident relief. And 
he went back to his work, muttering to him- 
self : " That there puddle swarmin' with live 
animals that can be turned wrong: side out and 
that can't be seen ! Now just think of that ! " 

Clinging to the light side of this can the 
next morning were what looked like a dozen 



THE HUNGRY GLOVE. 141 

short threads frayed at the free ends. (See cut 
at end of chapter.) But to call them threads 
is to speak as through a microscope, for the 
speech magnifies them as much as a half-inch 
objective would. Instead, they were in size 
like the finest strand of a fine thread, with the 
slenderest possible lints or filaments fringing 
the ends. It would seem that nothing could 
be more attenuated. Certainly the tentacles of 
a small Hydra viridiSj or green hydra, must 
be the ultimate object which the unaided eye 
can perceive. 

The brown ones {Hydra vidgaris) were 
somewhat larger. A coiled one clinging to the 
glass looked at first glance like a small leaflet 
of Lemna with the roots attached. Another 
adult had a young one budded from its side, 
and the little one was extending its tentacles, 
trying to earn its o^vn living in the world. 
Afterward I saw this baby clinging alone on 
the glass, a mere speck, with six almost imper- 
ceptible fibers radiating from its head, looking 
more like a minute poppy seed trying to be a 
star than like a living creature watching for its 
bread and butter. In another place a parent 
and child were trying to swallow the same worm. 

The five or seven tentacles of the hydraB 
are their arms, and surround the mouth, which 



142 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



is nothing more than an opening at the top of 
the hollow tube. The tentacles are hollow 
and covered with warts or . knobs (3, Chart 
IV), and in each knob is coiled a lasso with 







a sting at the end of it. The hydra sits with 
these long arms extended, and when its prey 
appears, throws out the lassos and paralyzes 
the victim with its stings. Then the arms 
bend over and force the benumbed victim 
down the hydra's throat. 



THE HUNGEY GLOVE. 143 

The addition of a drop of acetic acid to the 
water on the slide will irritate the hydra, caus- 
ing it to throw out its lasso lines. A shelled 
animal, like a crustacean, may be protected 
from the sting by its hard covering; but a 
soft animal, like a worm, always dies even when 
the tentacles do not convey it to the mouth. 

The tentacles also assist in locomotion ; for 
the hydra can bend over, as in 2, Fig. 40, hold- 
ing on by the tentacles while it loosens its foot 
and sets it forward, like a measure worm. 

These hydrse may be turned, tentacles and 
all, making skin into stomach and placing the 
stomach outside where the skin belongs. After 
two or three days they will eat again as vora- 
ciously as ever. You ma)^ tear ofl: their fingers, 
and they will grow again. You may cut them 
into cross-sections, and each section will become 
a perfect hydra. You may cut them into strips 
lengthwise, and each strip will roll together 
into a tube, develop tentacles, and presently go 
on as if nothing had happened. You may 
even cut off the head of one and the mouth 
will go right along taking in food, like the man 
whose head was cut off by such a neat stroke 
that he never knew it was off, but kept on 
talking, till at length he sneezed, and the head 
fell from his shoulders and rolled along the 



144 IN BEOOK AND BAYOU. 

ground. You will know now why an evil whicli 
is irrepressible is said to be " hydra-headed." 

The hydrse produce offspring by bulging 
out the wall of the body and forming a bud, 
which is hollow and opens into the body cav- 
ity of the adult, so that what the parent eats 
may enter the body of the offspring, and what 
the offspring eats may enter into and nourish 
the parent (1, 1, Chart IV ; 3, Fig. 40). Some- 
times the bud remains attached to the parent 
and itseK buds before pinching itself off and 
beginning to live independently. A colony of 
nineteen parents, children, and grandchildren 
have been seen on one original hydra. 

This is rather mixing up matters. But 
these fresh- water hj^drse have some cousins who 
live in salt sea water, and who remain always 
attached to each other, with free communica- 
tion between their body cavities, forming large 
colonies which spread out like a house of many 
compartments, with halls and corridors leading 
from one to the other. 

In these marine colonies it is the business 
of certain of the hydroids to rear all the chil- 
dren, of certain others to act as policemen and 
protect the colony, and of certain others to se- 
cure and eat all the food for the colony. 

In these colonies one would think that Na- 



THE HUNGKY GLOVE. 145 

ture was making her first clumsy experiment 
at differentiation of matter to perform special 
functions, and had not yet learned how to con- 
dense her experiments into one body, for in 
these colonies we find different functions as- 
signed to different individuals, and not to differ- 
ent parts of one individual. We human beings 
are quite willing that some one shall be ap- 
pointed to take care of us and do our work for 
us, but I do not think, do you, that any of us 
wish to carry the principle of division of labor 
so far as to have another do our eating for us ? 

Our little Hydrae in the glass can (see cut 
at end of chapter) are doing their own work 
very energetically this morning. They are 
grouped all along the water ways on the bright- 
est side of the jar, and are spreading their nets 
and fishing most industriously. 

And now down the main street of this 
thriving aquatic city, right into the open arms 
of the Hydrae, there comes hurrying an im- 
portant personage. His name is Sir Daphnia 
Pulex. He must certainly be a great railroad 
magnate, judging from his businesslike manner 
and the ease with which he brushes small fry 
away Avith one kick of that powerful hind foot 
of his. He comes pushing along Vv^ith an air 



146 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



wLidi indicates that the machinery of the world 
is waiting till he arrives to set it in motion. 




iS^T 



Fig. 41. — Hydra attacking a water flea. 

But suddenly he pauses. Has he forgotten 
something? He does not turn back after it. 
He seems to have changed his mind, and to 
have concluded that the affairs of the world 
are of no great importance, after all. Ah ! this 



THE HUNGRY GXiOVE. 



147 



is what has happened : He has been hit by the 
loose end of a cable belonging to the Hydra- 
Electric Company, and the current has been 
discharged into him. His arms droop. His feet 
no longer move. He seems to be meditating. 
Perhaps he has been suddenly confronted with 
the problem, '^ Is life worth living ? " and has 
decided in the negative. With one last sigh, 
'' Adieu, vain world ! " he disappears down the 
hydra's throat. To-morrow the newsboys of 
this moist city will be calling, " Tr'bune, Times ! 
Thrillin' account of death b'lectricity ! All 
about the tragic fate of Sir Daphnia Pulex ! " 

But, for the great magnate to-day, his 
errand is no longer pressing. He has hung his 
harp on the willows, and dies a captive beside 
the waters of Hydralon. 




Hydralon. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

"PLAIN^TS AT THE MOMEKT OF BECOMESTG 
AIN^IMALS." 

THE GEEEN SNOWFLAKES. 

{Desmids,) 

Eaely in the montli of Marcli tlie water is 
filled with moving green objects which thrive 
in the cool season. They are the DesmidSj and 
are plants in reality as well as in color, propa- 
gating by spores. They may be smooth or 
rough, warty or spined, notched or toothed, cut 
or divided, round or star-shaped, crescent-shaped 
or in bands of ribbons ; but they are always 
evenly green in color, slow and stately in mo- 
tion, and move only forward, not being able to 
retrace their steps without turning around. If 
a desmid moves rapidly or retreats without 
turning about, you may know that it is not a 
desmid but a diatom. It is frequently difficult 
to distinguish between the two, for t}ie diatom 
is sometimes green, and both are found with 

148 



PLANTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 



149 



the individuals growing side by side in long 
bands; but the desmid adheres to stems of 
plants, never having a stalk of its own ; it loves 
the place in the bayou where the sunlight falls, 
and it comes up to float near the surface ; while 
the diatom forms the brown, yellow, and fawn- 




Fig. 4^2. — Desmids ; f, Closternim. 

colored coating on the rocks at the bottom of 
the shady nooks. 

At the ends of the desmid, but not of the 
diatom, there are often empty spaces, near which 
a movement of liquid may be detected, which 
movement resembles the rising of bubbles or 



150 ^^ BROOK AND BAYOU. 

the convection in water when heating. Besides 
the clear space at the ends^ some of the crescent- 
or bow-shaped desmids belonging to the Clos- 
terium family have a clear space in the middle, 
and have the pulsatile vesicles arranged in two 
pairs (Fig. 42). 

Some of them are very pretty, and are 
named Eurastrum^ or star disk^ Micrasterias^ 
or little star, etc. 

The desmids are most active and most nu- 
merous in March and April, which is their time 
for conjugation. They multiply by fission as 
well as by spores, and when dividing, one part 
remains quiet while the other sways about and 
breaks oif with a Jerk. Then the ends that 
were attached round up and assume the cus- 
tomary shape of the species. 

There are more than four hundred species, 
all living in clean, placid water, and so afraid 
of the restless salt sea that they will not grow 
in running streams, for fear of being carried 
down to the ocean. 



PLANTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 



151 



IL 

THE FIEST MUSICIAN. 
{Diatom.) 

The people of Sweden and Norway use for 
food an extremely fine, cream-colored powder 




Fig. 43. — Orthosira Dressceri, 

which they find in the mountains and which 
they call '^ mountain meal." 

In Italy there is a white earth that is used 
in the manufacture of candies. 

The meal and the earth both consist in 
deposits of immense numbers of very minute 



Fig. 44. — NitzscTiia vivax. 



animals, called Diatoms^ which have thin sili- 
cious shells. Thirty miles above San Francisco 
is a white clay composed of the same thing. 
The flint which is used for Indian arrowheads 



152 



m BROOK A^B BAYOU. 



is fossil shells of diatoms hardened by the in- 
ternal lires of the earth. 

Grindstones and whetstones on which you 
sharpen your hatchets and knives are made of 




Fig. 45. — Pinnularia 
major. 



Fig. 46. — Stauroneis 
Phoenicenteron, 



the same gritty shells, packed and consolidated 
in the same way by heat. The sand used for 
fine iron castings comes from these same sili- 
cious deposits of diatom frustules. 

These shells are seldom more than 



10 



of an inch in thickness, so you can try to esti- 



PLANTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 



153 



mate how many of them it would take to 
form the deposit eighteen feet deep under the 
city of Richmond, Virginia. 
And if you succeed in that, 
you may enjoy trying to esti- 
mate how many diatoms 
went to the makino;; of the 
deposit in Victoria Land, 




Fig. 47. — Navicula didyma. 



Fig. 48. — Pleurosigma 
formosiim. 



w^hich is 400 miles long, 120 miles wide, and 
of unknown thickness. 

You will be prepared to admit after this 
calculation that diatoms must have been some- 



154 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

what numerous in tlie times when these beds 
were formed. So they were, and so they 
are now ; for, besides the cy clops of which I 
told you, thirty species have been found in 
the filter through which the Croton Eiver 
water is strained at the Astor House, New 
York; there are three hundred species in 
Lake Michigan; they form the brown velvet 
patches on the mud of ponds and marshes; 
and in some places the waters of the ocean 
literally swarm with them, from the surface to 
the lowest depth to which light can penetrate, 
and from the tropics to the circumpolar re- 
gions. 

When you see under your microscope a 
little brown boat-shaped object drifting help- 
lessly along, like an empty canoe, you may be 
sure that a tragedy has occurred, for this is the 
deserted house of a little diatom that was swal- 
lowed by some other animal which sucked all 
the life and juices out of it and then cast away 
the shell ; for birds, oysters, whelks, crabs, lob- 
sters, amoebae, sun animalcules, paramoecii, and 
even some aquatic plants prey upon diatoms. 

The elaborate and artistic manner in which 
the diatom ornaments his house can be best 
studied from these empty shells. The shells 
are spiral, square, heart-shaped, wedge-shaped, 



PLANTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 155 

boat-shaped, or circular, and are exquisitely 
carved, toothed, or dotted. Nothing can ex- 
ceed the vividness in color of some, or the 
delicacy in marking of others. 

Diatoms grow on branching stems like tiny 
trees ; in clear or muddy, fresh or brackish 
water ; in running streams, or in pools left by 
the retreating tide. 

Owing to their peculiar structure, they prop- 
agate by a curious self-division. The shell 
is composed of two parts which fit together 
like the two parts of a pill box ; and when 
they multiply, the cover and box separate, 
the one forming a new box, the other a new 
cover. 

Diatoms are modified by environment, just 
as people are : if individuals of the same species 
are placed in different localities, their descend- 
ants become so unlike as to be assigned to dif- 
ferent species; as the children of twin broth- 
ers become entirely dissimilar if one lives in 
the country and the other in the city. 

When the diatom is alive, it moves a cer- 
tain distance in one direction and then reverses 
engine and returns on the same track without 
turning around. 

The rhythmic movement of the curious 
Bacillaria is most significant. 

12 



156 I^ BROOK AND BAYOU. 

The Bacillaria paradoxa resembles a bundle 
of short round rods which seem to be attached 
to each other by invisible elastic threads. The 
center rod or frustule remains stationary while 
those on either side move in opposite direc- 
tions, stretching out till the ends are barely in 
contact, and each seems about to part company 
with the one behind it ; but here, as if held by 




Fig. 49. — BaciUaria paradoxa, 

an invisible thong, they pause an instant, and 
then retrace their steps with regular motion, 
passing the center one, and moving to the limit 
of motion in the opposite direction. And each 
frustule keeps time with the movements of the 
corresponding one on the other side of the sta- 
tionary frustule. 

Not only that, but if the advancing frus- 
tule meets with an obstacle which bars its 
progress, it does not return at once, but waits 
until its mate on the other side has reached a 
corresponding position on the return journey, 



PLANTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 157 

when it takes up the march without marring 
the rhythm, like a chorus singer w^ho waits for 
a certain beat so that he may not destroy the 
harmony. 

This motion of the Bacillaria paradoxa 
is supposed to be due to the action of light 
and heat, since it is in direct ratio to the 
amount of light and heat received, and ceases 
in darkness. 

Now what can this rhythmic motion and the 
inability of the rods to break asunder mean, 
but that the movement is due to the electricity 
in the sunlight, and that the invisible thong 
which binds the rods is electric polarity ? 

So we learn from this microscopic bacil- 
laria that light and heat are rhythmical, and 
we know at last why the planets move in such 
unvarying regularity and without discord. We 
know, too, that all the universe is rhythmical, 
musical, and that there is absolute truth in that 
beautiful old phrase, " When the morning stars 
sang together." 

And now and then there lives a man who 
feels this rhythm more keenly than his fellow- 
men, and is capable of transmitting it through 
his finger tips, and in him we have a great 
musical composer. And he, this Mendelssohn 
or Beethoven, says : " I did not create this 



158 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

music, I discovered it. I found it. It is in the 
air. It is everywhere." And this is true. It 
is in sunlight, which acts alike upon a bacillaria 
and a Beethoven. The movement of the bacil- 
laria is part of an everlasting symphony ; and 
as we watch the motion of the paradoxa rods 
sliding gently and smoothly in perfect unison, 
or resting till it is time again to join in the 
symphony, we are listening with our eyes to 
the music of the spheres ; we are learning that 
man and the stars are part of one great har- 
mony, and sway to the same rhythm which 
beats upon the bacillaria in the sands on the 
seashore. 

Or, to express it so as to strike a boy's 
fancy, man and the stars and a grindstone 
dance to the same music. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WIGGLERS AND MINUET DANCERS. 

Beside all tMs vast host of animals that 
swarm in the lakes and ponds, there are im- 
mense numbers of insect larvae, breathing water, 
eating cyclops and infusoria, tarrying awhile 
on their way to the upper air, which is the dip- 
ter's and neuropter's heaven. But because they 
are going to their heaven by and by they do 
not belittle the life they now have, nor per- 
suade themselves that it is a weary pilgrimage, 
to be endured with patience in view of the 
recompense to come. 

The larva swims gayly about, catching cy- 
clops, smacking his lips when he gets a fat one, 
and making the most of this world down in 
the water. After a while he climbs up on a 
bush and shuffles off his mortal coil by split- 
ting his coat down the back and crawling out 
of it. He rests awhile, drying his wings and 
getting his new breathing apparatus into work- 

159 



160 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 



ing order. Tlien lie whets his bill on the 
branches, and says : 

Fe fo fi f um, 

I smell the blood of an Euglishman; 

Dead or alive I will have some ! 

and he sucks the blood of the first boy he 
catches fishing. 

In the blackest muck of the ponds where 
there is a rich deposit of decomposed vegetable 
matter one may sometimes see 
a great wriggling, as of many 
fine threads standing in the 
water, with rapid undulations 
running up and down through 
each one. The thread is the 
StrephwiSj a worm that is 
covered with dark, angular 
marking, resembling a news- 
paper advertisement. It is 
very slender, so that it re- 
quires the closest scrutiny to 
detect one even when aided 
by the movement of the whole 
company. A single one would 
escape notice ; but, being very 
sociable, they live in large colonies. Early 
in spring the edge of some ponds is com- 
pletely cushioned with these wriggling bodies. 




Fig. 50. — Strephuris, 



WRIGGLERS AND MINUET DANCERS. 161 

They stand on their heads in the mire, and 
keep up an incessant wagging of their tails. 
This seems to be their business in life — a busi- 
ness which they have solemnly pledged them 
selves to follow so long as they all do live, 
Whether it is work or play is hard to decide, 
It may be they are dancing the minuet, with 
their bowings and curvetings. Or they may 
be serious creatures, feeling that the duties of 
life require unremitting toil ; for they never 
rest a moment. I once dipped up some, with 
the muck in which they are found, and put 
them in a glass can. As soon as the mud set- 
tled, there they were, wiggling with the utmost 
energy. They never stopped except when a 
little water beetle came among them ; then they 
disappeared as if by magic. But as soon as he 
was gone they began to stretch up out of their 
burrows and set to work again. At morn or 
at eve, by night or by day, week in and week 
out, for the three months that I kept them, there 
they were, always standing with their heads in 
the mud, wriggling. What they eat, how they 
multiply, or whether they die, this deponent 
saith not. Their life history seems to be 
summed up in one word — wiggle. 

Some aquatic worms have the ability to 
turn their middle segment into a head, divid- 



162 



IN BROOK AND BAYOU, 



ing themselves into two animals. The genus 
Lumhriculus forms a new head when the old 
one is cut off, — a proceeding which suggests a 
deficiency in man for which society ought per- 
haps to be profoundly thankful. 

Occasionally we meet people who speak of 
themselves as ^^ humble worms of the dust," and 
usually the general bearing of these individuals 




Fig. 51. — Aulophorus, 



justifies their genealogical claims ; but there are 
other people who might, with equal fitness, 
claim to be w^orms of the water, for in their 
manner of looking at the situation they resem- 
ble a certain aquatic worm known as the Au- 
lopJiorus. This worm lives in a sheath niade 



WRIGGLERS AND MINUET DANCERS. 163 

from odds and ends of debris^ which is so thin 
that you may readily see through it. The 
aulophorus climbs a little way out of the sheath, 
gazes about, and concludes that things don't 
look to suit him, -and nothing is going right, 
and the world is all upside down. So he 
doubles over, thrusting his head into his case 
farther and farther, and at the same time draw- 
ing his heels out, till presently his head is at 
the bottom of the sheath and his heels are in 
the air — or rather in the water. Then, of 
course, the world i§ upside down to him; so* 
presently he has to turn again. 

But by this time he is a trifle dizzy-headed 
and can not see clearly, so matters seem more 
crooked than ever. After looking about awhile 
he reverses his position, with the same discon- 
certing result. Standing on his head, every- 
thing is topsy-turvy, till he again careens over, 
by which time he has become so confused in 
his mind that he never more can tell what is 
right side up and what is upside down. 



CHAPTER X. 

TAKING VACATIONS. 

In all this business of making worlds and 
Beethovens and diatoms, in the making of root 
feet and hair feet and telescopic feet and whip- 
lash feet and paddle feet and tentacle feet and 
feet of sunbeams, poor old Mother Nature 
must sometimes have grown weary of serious 
work and have wished for a little recreation. 

Maybe it was for this reason that she made 
some of the curious things we find from time 
to time, such as the Stmu^idia and the Cercomo- 
naSj which do not seem to know w^hich way they 
wish to travel. Perhaps it was when she had 
made eyes w^hich didn't work to suit her that, 
by way of ridiculing herself, she made such 
eyes and eye-spots as those of the Shore crabs, 
and the Stomajpod, 

Once in a while, too, there is just the faint- 
est suggestion that she felt a trifle out of sorts 
and was looking around for a good club, as 

164 



TAKING VACATIONS. 



165 



when she made the Lepas. But generally she 
seems to have been very facetious when not 



^ 




Fig. 52. — 1 and 6, Zoea of shore crab; 2, Trinema ; 3, Cerco- 
monas; 4, Staui^idia ; 5, Zoea of Stomapod ; 7, Lepas, 



166 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

very serious, for it was surely in a waggish 
moment that she made the zoea of shore crabs. 
Do you think she was tempted to call one 
of these Man^ and have an end of her experi- 
menting ? 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE GREATEST JOKE OF ALL. 
Boy under Microscojje. 

A MiCEOSCOPiST gathered up his basket of 
bottles, his dipper, and his microscope and 
went to spend the day at the river side. He 
took his little boy along, knowing that the 
child would enjoy the tramp and the oppor- 
tunity of wading in the water. The man set 
down his basket and went to work just where 
the bayou emptied into the river, so that he 
might get specimens from still or running water 
at his pleasure. He worked for several hours, 
while the boy ran along the shore catching 
butterflies or splashing in the water. The sci- 
entist loved the little creatures he was study- 
ing, and when he found familiar ones, or when 
he had examined others of them all he cared to, 
he put them gently back into the brook so that 
they might live on unharmed. When he found 
a rare one or one that he wished to study 

167 



168 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

further, he put it into one of his bottles to 
take home. The man and the boy had often 
been there before, and there were animals in 
the bayou that had more than once been terri- 
fied at finding themselves on the slides under 
his microscope and had been relieved to find 
themselves swimming about in the bayou again 
sound in body and limb. And these had come 
to wonder what it all meant, and what sort of 
a machine a microscope was anyway. So they 
hung about near the shore watching him, wish- 
ing they could look into that machine of his, 
and that he were not such a huge being, so 
they could see the whole of him at once. 

By and by the father wished to go around 
the bayou to get some green moss growing 
at the water's edge on the other side. He 
took a bottle and set off, leaving his son to 
guard the microscope till his return. The boy 
sat on the shore beside the instrument and 
watched the minnows darting about and the 
waves rippling around his bare feet. But 
the day was warm and he was weary, so he 
soon stretched himself on the sand and fell 
fast asleep. 

Presently a minnow swam up and, seeing 
how tempting his toes looked, tried to nibble 
them. This made the boy draw up his feet 



THE GREATEST JOKE OF ALL. 169 

and roll over, pushing the microscope into the 
water, and rolling into it himself, till all his 
body was covered and even his broivn cnrls 
were wet. But he was so drowsy and the water 
was so warm that it did not waken him. 

Now this was the very opportunity for which 
the wee water beings had been waiting. They 
gathered around in great glee and proceeded 
to inspect him through the instrument. But 
they were not used to handling microscopes, 
and they got it wrong end to and wrong side 
up. This, however, was all the better for 
them, for, instead of making the boy look 
larger it made him seem smaller, so they could 
get the whole of him into the microscopic field. 
One after another they peeped at him. But 
the more they peeped and pondered, the more 
puzzled they became as to what manner of crea- 
ture he might be. Nothing like him grew on 
mosses or lived in the water. They had seen 
parts of him on shore at various times, but, 
seeing; him all too;ether, he looked even odder 
than they had supposed. 

'' What manner of animal is he ? " they 
queried. And each had a different theory, but 
none could decide. " He must be related to the 
Amoeba family," said the Arcella ; " for if you 
will notice, his pseudopodia have buds at the 



170 IN BROOK AND BA150U. 

ends — five buds on each pseudopod — twenty in 
all. Think what a family ! Most of us con- 
sider nine a large number." 

'' He seems to have tried to look like me," 
said the Vaginicola, ^^for he is inclosed in a 
lorica, and so was one that I once saw fall out 
of a boat." 

^^YeSj he is evidently an attempt at a 
ciliatus, for Just look at the bristles on his 
head ! " said the Stentor. 

" But he sometimes swims on his back, and 
that little one which comes here with the tubs 
and the washerwoman always lies on its back 
kicking its four legs in the air as if it were try- 
ing to swim like a shrimp," said the Branchi- 
pus, " And he has two eyes. Without doubt 
he was meant for a shrimp, only he didn't get 
enough legs. He has but two • pairs. Per- 
haps that is because he is still in the nauplius 
stage." 

"1 think what you call his front pair of 
legs are antennae," said the Daphnia. " They 
are not set in his head right, to be sure, but 
I've seen him stand on his hind legs and move 
those front things about just like antennae." 

'' No, those are tentacles," said the Hydra. 
" I've seen him push food into his mouth with 
^ them." 



THE GREATEST JOKE OF ALL. 



171 



"Yes, but I've seen him walk on the front 
pair alone," said the Paramoecium. " One day 
there were half a dozen of them capering 
around on the beach, and all at once they 
turned top side down and went walking off 
one after another in a string, each with his 




head down and his hind pair of pseudopods 
up in the air." 

"That proves what I said," replied the 
Hydra. " He walks with his tentacles, as any 
sensible being should. I have no doubt that 
whoever made him intended him for a hydra, 
although he was rather spoiled in the making." 

"No, he's a contortionist," said the Cantho- 
camptus. " I've seen the washerwoman's nau- 

13 



172 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

plius flop over with its back uppermost and go 
crawling off on its fonr legs ; and it did a cu- 
rious thing as it crawled^ for, instead of using 
its hind feetj it doubled them back at the middle 
joint and allowed the lower half of the leg to 
drag clumsily along, while it used the knee 
joints as feet." 

"He seems to have been poorly put to- 
gether in several respects," said the Fairy 
Shrimp. "Think of having one's branchiae 
or breathers inside the body, where there's 
nothing to breathe ! And then the absurdity 
of having one's eyes set into one's head, and 
both looking in the same direction ! " 

"Think of the absurdity of having two 
eyes at all ! " said the Cyclops. " Two eyes to 
see one thing ! Eidiculous ! " 

"The most ridiculous thing I ever saw 
about this strange animal," said the little 
Coleps, " was what happened one warm summer 
day when several of his kind came down to the 
shore and peeled off their loricas; and then 
one of them began to unscrew one of his 
pseudopods and actually twisted it off and 
left it lying on the sand, while he and the 
others jumped into the water and began to 
kick and splash, sprawling about like frogs. I 
never had so much fun in my life. I nearly 



THE GREATEST JOKE OF ALL. 173 

went into hysterics at seeing that one hind leg 
kicking in the water while the other lay on the 
shore like a dead wooden thing. I had to hold 
my sides for fear my hoops would burst and 
I'd die lauo^hino;." 

'' How awkward to have pseudopodia which 
get broken off and have to be replaced by 
wooden ones ! It's a pity he doesn't have a 
shell to draw them into," said the Arcella. 

" The worst of it is that he carries the hard 
part or shell of him inside, instead of having 
it outside to protect the soft part of his body, 
as we do," said the Cypris. 

"And his mastax is at the surface of him 
instead of where the food is to be digested," 
said the Rotifer. 

" He seems to be hollow like the Vorticellse," 
said a Bell Animalcule. " But he isn't pretty 
nor cup-shaped, and what can he want of two 
stems f " 

"You are right about being hollow. His 
head, at least, is," said the Euplotes, " for I've 
seen several of these animals sit on a log and 
open a slit which they have in the side of 
their heads and set clappers going in the great 
hollow ball, making a ludicrous cackling and 
croaking like the noises made by frogs. The 
oddest part of it was that these noises seemed 



174 I^ BROOK AXD BAYOU. 

to be very interesting to them. When one 
croaked, the others would turn their heads to 
listen and would w^atch his clapper w^agging, 
and then another would croak, and they would 
turn to him ; and then another would croak — 
one after another, almost without cessation ; 
sometimes two or three at once, and every one 
so attentive and interested ! I suppose it is 
some sort of game similar to that with which 
the frogs amuse themselves of evenings in the 
spring. But it is such a very comical perform- 
ance, and the noises they make are so varied 
and ridiculous, that it is more entertaining than 
any frog concert. I should be inclined to think 
these animals were related to me, because they 
can run backward ; but the fact that they re- 
semble frogs in the noises they make and in 
their manner of swimming seems to indicate 
that they are more closely related to the frog 
family. But I confess that I can't decide wJiat 
they are." 

"Well, friends," said the Rotifer, who w^as 
acknowledged to be the most brainy one of the 
company, " this animal is such a jumble, it is 
clearly impossible to classify him. I can find 
two and only two explanations for him. You 
see, he has some points of resemblance to each 
one of us, and indeed seems to be related to 



THE GREATEST JOKE OF ALL. 175 

all of US ; but every part of his body is either 
imperfect in itself or is imperfectly located. 

'' Now, first, it may be that the Creator used 
him to experiment upon, and put the parts of 
his body together to see how they would w^ork, 
and what alterations he should make when he 
came to create tis. He may be a sort of trial 
creature, made before the real work of creation 
began. 

" Or, secondly, he may be a conglomerate of 
all the parts that were left after making us 
— a batch of odds and ends thrown together 
at haphazard, with some putty to hold them 
wherever they happened to stick — a creature 
made just for the fun of the thing ; for — and I 
hope you will excuse my frankness — but some- 
times when I look at some of you — of vs, I 
mean — it seems to me that the Creator must 
have a vein of humor in him which cropped 
out once in a while in his work. And perhaps 
when he finished making us and had completed 
the important part of creation, he was tired 
and felt the need of a little relaxation, and 
so he just threw this creature together to see 
what a ridiculous thing he could make, so as 
to have something to laugh at." 

• • • • » 

Which is it f 



PKONOUNCING GLOSSAEY. 



AcTLNOPHRYS (ak-ti-nof^ris). 
Amoeba, pi. bse (a-me'ba, pi. be). 
Amphileptus (am-fi-lep'tiis). 
Arcella, pi. se (ar-seVla). 

*' a-cii^mi-na-ta, pointed. 

** den-ta'ta, toothed. 

** mi-tra'ta, miter-shaped. 
Aeronaut (a'er-o-nat). A balloonist. 
Alchemist (aFke-mist). An ancient chemist. 
Aquatic (a-kwat'ik). Living in water. 
Atom (at'iim). The smallest particle of matter that can enter 

into combination. 
Articulated (ar-tik'ti-lat-ed). Jointed. 
Bacillaria (bas-i-la'ri-aj. 

"• (paradoxa). Not to be expected ; contradictory. 
Brachiopoda (brak-i-op'o-da). 
Branch ipus (brang-ki'piis). 
Branchiopod (brang'ki-o-pod). 
Branchiopoda (brang-ki-op'o-da). 
Canthocamptus (can-tho-camp'tiis). 
Cercomonas (ser-ko-mo'nas). 

Chary bdis (ka-rib'dis). A fabled whirlpool near Sicily. 
Chilodon cucullulus (kflo-d5n ku-kM-lultis). 
Ciliata (sil-i-a^ta). 

Clathrulina elegans (klath-ro-li'n4 el-e ganz). 

177 



178 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

Coleps (koleps). 

Cothurnia (ko-ther'ni-a). 

Cyclops (sf klops). 

Cypris (si^pris). 

Carapace (kar'a-pas). The shell covering the back of crusta- 
ceans. 

Chitinous (ki^tm-us). Horny; the substance incasing insects 
and crustaceans. 

Daphnia (daf^ni-a). 

Desmid (des'mid). 

Diaptomus (di-ap^to-miis). 

Dipter (dip'ter). A two winged insect; a fly; a mosquito. 

Debris (da'bre). Rubbish, driftwood. 

Dorsal (dor 'sal). Pertaining to the back. 

Epistylis (ep-i-stilis). 

Euglena (u-gle'na). 

'' (tri-que'ta), three-sided. 
** (san-guin'e-a), red. 
** (vi-ri'dis), green. 

Euplotes (u-plo^tes). 

Eliminated (e-liml-nat ed). Caused to disappear. 

Encysted (en-sist'ed). Inclosed in a sac or cyst. 

Environment (en-vi'ron-ment). The surrounding conditions 
by which living things are modified. 

Extemporized (eks-tem'po-rizd). Made off-hand or under ne- 
cessity. 

Exuding (eks-u'dirg). Discharging through the pores. 

Flagellata (flag-el-la'ta). 

Function (fiink'shun). The appropriate action of any organ. 

Frustule (frus^tul). The shell of a diatom. 

Genealogical (jen-e-a-loj^i-kal). Pertaining to the history of 
ancestors and their children. 

Hydra (hi'dra). 

Hereditary (he-red^-ta-ri). Inherited ; descended from father 
to child. 

Hypnocyst (hip'no-sist). A slumber sac ; a cyst in which pro- 
tozoans lie dormant. 



PRONOUNCING GLOSSARY. 179 

Infusoria (in-fu-so'ri-a). Protozoans found in vegetable infu- 
sions. 

Incipient (m-sipl-Snt). Beginning to be. (This word must 
not be confounded with ^'insipient/' stupid.) 

Inherent (in-her'ent). Inseparably associated or involved with. 

Jardiniere (zhar-de-nyar'). An ornamental receptacle for plants. 

Joie de vie (zhwa-d'-ve^). Joy of life. 

Larva (larVa). The wormlike young insect before it has 
wings. 

Locomotor (lo-ko-mo'ter). Pertaining to movement. 

Molecule (moFe-kul). An invisible particle of matter. 

Masticating (mas'ti-kat-ing). Chewing. 

Neuropter (nu-rop^ter). An insect with four net-veined wings. 

Noctiluca (nok-ti-lu'ka). 

Nucleus (nu'kle-iis). A kernel ; a central point about which 
matter is gathered. 

(Esophagus (e-sof'a-giis). The gullet. 

Olfactory (ol-fak'to-ry). Connected with the sense of smell. 

Paramoecium (par-a-me^si-iim). 

Protozoan (pro-to-zo'an). One of the lowest or single- celled 
animals. 

Pterodina (ter-o-di'na). 

Pyxicola (pik-sik'o-la). 

Polarity (po-lar i-ty). The condition which exhibits contrasted 
properties corresponding to contrasted parts, as attraction 
and repulsion in opposite parts of a magnet. 

Prehension (pre-hen'shiin). The act of grasping. 

Progenitor (pro-jSnl-terj. A forefather. 

Quiescent (kwi-es'sent). In a state of repose. 

Rotifer (ro^ti-fer). 

Rotifera (ro-ti-fe'ra). 

Recapitulating (re-ka-pit'u-lat-ing). Summing up. 

Refracting (re-fraktlng). Bending from the direct course. 

Spirogyra (spi-ro-jfra). A fresh- water plant in which are 
spiral bands of green. 

Stauridia (sta-rid'i-a). 

Stentor (stSn'tor). 



180 IN BROOK AND BAYOU. 

Stephanoceros (stef a-nos'e-riis). 

Strephuris (stref-ti^ris). 

Silicious (si-lish'us). Made of quartz, as sand. 

Thuricola (thti-nc'o-la). 

Trachelocerca (tra-ke-lo-ser'ka). 

Thoracic (tho-raslk). 

Yaginicola (vaj-i-nik-ola). 

Yampyrella (vam-pi rella). 

Yorticella (v6r-ti-seria). 

Yentral (ven'tral). The under side of an animal. 

Yiscera (vis^se-ra). The internal organs, especially those of 

the abdomen. 
Yiviparous (vi-vip^a-riis). Bringing forth the young alive; not 

exuding the egg before hatching. 



THE -Ei^jy. 



D, APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

TTANDBOOK OF BIRDS OF EASTERN 
J^ NORTH AMERICA, With Keys to the Species, Descrip- 
tions of their Phimages, Nests, etc. ; their Distribution and Migra- 
tion. Treating of all the birds, some five hundred and forty in num- 
ber, which have been found east of the Mississippi River, and from 
the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. By Frank M. Chapman, 
Assistant Curator of Mammalogy and Ornithology, American Museum 
of Natural History. With over 200 Illustrations. i2mo. Library 
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The author's position has not only given him exceptional opportunities for the 
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use of illustrations, concise descriptions, analytical keys, dates of migration, and re- 
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OPINIONS OF ORNITHOLOGISTS AND THE PRESS. 

** Written in simple, non-technical language, with special reference to the needs of 
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" I am delighted with the ' Handbook.' So entirely trustworthy and up to date 
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" The ' Handbook ' is destined to fill a place In ornithology similar to that held by 
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together with its many original ideas, make it the standard work of its class." — John 
H. Sage, Secretary of the A7iierican Ornithologists' Union. 

*' Your charming and most useful little book. ... I had good reason to expect an 
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We receive here very many inquiries concerning a popular book on birds, or rather. 1 
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D. APPLETOiN & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

AM I LIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND 
GARDEN, By F. Schuyler Mathews. Illustrated with 
200 Drawings by the Author, and containing an elaborate Index 
showing at a glance the botanical and popular names, family, 
color, locality, environment, and time of bloom of several hun- 
dred flowers. i2mo. Library Edition, cloth, $1.75 ; Pocket 
Edition, flexible covers, $2.25. 

In this convenient and useful volume the flowers which one finds in the fields are 
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have come under cultivation, and, as the title indicates, the book furnishes a ready 
guide to a knowledge of wild and cultivated flowers alike. 

" I have examined Mr. Mathews's little book upon * Familiar Flowers of Field and 
Garden,' and 1 have pleasure in commending the accuracy and beauiy of the drawings 
and the freshness of the text. We have long needed some botany from the hand ot an 
artist, who sees form and color without the formality of the scientist. The book deserves 
a reputation." — L. H. Bailey, Professor of Horticulture, Cornell University. 

** I am much pleased with your * Familiar Flowers of Field and Garden.' It is a 
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valuable part of it. Taken in connection with the many caieiul drawings, it would 
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** The author describes in a most interestmg and charming manner many familiar 
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ings from N'ature, made by his own pen. . . . The book will do much to more fully 
acquaint the reader with those plants of field and garden treated upon with which he 
may be but partly familiar, and go a long way toward correcting many popular 
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has devoted much attention, and on which he is now a recognized authority in the 
trade." — New York Florists' JSxchange. 

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ingly presented. ... It seems to us to be a most attractive handbook of its kind." — 
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"A delightful book and very useful. Its language is plain and familiar, and the 
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** Charmingly written, and to any one who loves the flowers— and who does not?— > 
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fields a new world full of curiosity and delight, and invest them with a new interest in 
his sight." — Christian Work. 

" One need not be deeply read in floral lore to be interested in what Mr. Mathews 
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to be." — New York Mail and Ej^press. 

'* Mr. F. Fchuyler Mathews's careful description and giacefnl drawings of our 
* Familiar Flowers of Field and Garden ' are fitted to make them familiar even to those 
who have not before made their acquaintance." — New York Evening Post. 



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P AM I LIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 
^ By F. Schuyler Mathews, author of "Familiar Flowers of 
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lustrated with over 200 Drawings from Nature by the Author. 
l2mo. Cloth, $1.75- 

**It is not often that we find a book which deserves such unreserved commendation. 
It is commendable for several reasons : it is a book that has been needed for a long 
time, it is written in a popular and attractive style, it is accurately and profusely iilus- 
traced, and it is by an authority on the subject oi which it treats." — Public Opinion 

** Most readers of the book will find a world of information they never dreamed of 
about leaves that have long been familiar with them. The study will open to them 
new sources of pleasure in every tree around their houses., and prove interesting as well 
as instructive." — San Francisco Call, 

"A revelation of the sweets and joys of natural things that we are too apt to pass 
by with but little or no thought. The book is somewhat more than an ordinary botan- 
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" Has about it a simplicity and a directness of purpose that appeal at once to every 
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** Mr. Mathews's book is just what is needed to open our eyes. His text is charm- 
ing, and displays a loving and intimate acquaintance with tree life, while the drawings 
of foliage are beautifully executed. We commend the volume as a welcome companion 
in country walks." — Philadtiphia Public Ledger. 

**The book is one to read, and then to keep at hand for continual reference." — 
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as of instruction, and it will be a valuable introduction to the more scientific study of 
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** This book will be found most satisfactory. It is a book which is needed, written 
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cagj Inter- Ocean. 

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" This very valuable book will be prized by all who love Nature." — The Churchman. 

"Of the many Nature books that are constantly inviting the reader 10 leave pave- 
ment and wander in country bypaths, this one, with its scientific foundation, and its 
simplicity and clearness of style, is among the most alluring." — St. Paul Pioneer-Press. 



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D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



HE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 

AND OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE. By Gilbert 
White. With an Introduction by John Burroughs, 80 Illus- 
trations by Clifton Johnson, and the Text and New Letters of 
the Buckland edition. In two volumes. i2mo. Cloth, $4.00. 

*' White himself, were he alive to-day, would join all his loving readers in thanking 
the American publishers for a thoroughly excellent presentation of his famous book. 
. . . This latest edition of White's book must go into all of our libraries; our young 
people must have it at hand, and our trained lovers of select literature must take it into 
their homes. By such reading we keep knowledge in proper perspective and are able 
to grasp the proportions of discovery." — Maurice Tho77ipso7i, in the Indepe7ide7it. 

*' White's * Selborne ' belongs in the same categor^^ as Walton's ' Complete Angler ' ; 
. . . here they are, the * Complete Angler ' well along in its third century, and the other 
just started in its second century, both of them as highly esteemed as they were when 
first published, both bound to live forever, if we may trust the predictions of their re- 
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book has lasted and why this new and beautiful edition has been printed. . . . This new 
edition of his work comes to us beautifully illustrated by Clifton Johnson." — Neiv J ork 
Ti77ies. 

*' White's * Selborne' has been reprinted many times, in many forms, but never be- 
fore, so far as we can remember, in so creditable a form as it assumes in these two 
volumes, nor with drawings comparable to those which Mr. Clifton Johnson has made 
for them." — New York Mail a7id Express. 

** We are loath to put down the two handsome volumes in which the source of such 
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the touch, the weight of each volume is so nicely adapted to the hand, and one turns 
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light which comes through a window looking on the English countryside— the rooks 
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" Rural England has many attractions for the lover of Nature, and no work, per- 
haps, has done its charms greater justice than Gilbert White's 'Natural History of 
Selborne.' " — Bosto7i Journal. 

** This charming edition leaves really nothing to be desired." — West77iinster 
Gazette. 

" This edition is beautifully illustrated and bound, and deserves to be welcomed by 
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'' Handsome and desirable in every respect. . . . Welcome to old and young." — 
New York Herald. 

"The charm of White's * Selborne' is not definable But there is no other book of 
the past generations that will ever take the place with the field naturalists." — Balti- 
more Sun. 



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D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

THE STORY OF THE WEST SERIES. 
Edited by Ripley Hitchcock. 

" There is a vast extent of territory lying between the Missouri River and the Pacific 
coast which has barely been skimmed over so far. That the conditions of life therein 
are undergoing changes little short of marvelous will be understood when one recalls 
the fact that the first white male cliild born in Kansas is still living there ; and Kansas 
is by no means one of the newer States. Revolutionary indeed has been the upturning 
of the old condition of affairs, and little remains thereof, and le>s will remain as each 
year goes by, until presently there will be only tradition of the Sioux and Comanches, 
the cowboy life, the wild horse, and the antelope. Histories, many of them, have been 
written about the Western country alluded to, but most if not practically all by outsiders 
who knew not personally that life of kaleidoscopic allurement. But ere it shall have 
vanished forever we are likely to have truthful, complete, and charming portrayals oi 
it produced by men who actually knew the life and have the power to describe it." — 
Henry Edward Rood, in the Mail and Express. 



T 



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HE S2VRY OF THE INDIAN, By George 

Bird Grinnell, author of *' Pawnee Hero Stories," " Black- 
foot Lodge Tales," etc. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

** In every way worthy of an author who, as an authority upon the Western Indians, 
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London Daily Chronicle. 

"Only an author qualified by personal experience could offer us a profitable study 
of a race so alien from our own as is the Indian in thought, feeling, and culture. Only 
long association with Indians can enable a white man measurably to comprehend their 
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New York Sun, 



T 



HE STORY OF THE MINE, By Charles 
Howard Shinn. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

"The author has written a book, not alone full of information, but replete with the 
true romance of the American mine." — New York Tijnes. 

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"Both a history and a romance. . . . Highly interesting, new, and thrilling."— 
Philadelphia Inquirer, 

IN PREPARATION. 

The Story of the Trapper. By Gilbert Parker. 

The Story of the Cowboy. By E. Hough. 

The Story of the Soldier. By Capt. J. McB. Stembel, U. S. A. 

The Story of the Explorer. 

The Story of the Railroad. 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



THE LIBRARY OF USEFUL STORIES. 

Each book complete in itself. By writers of authority in their various 
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T 



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NOW READY. 

'HE STORY OF THE STARS. By G. F. Cham- 
bers, F. R. A. S., author of " Handbook of Descriptive and 
Practical Astronomy," etc. With 24 Illustrations. 

** The author presents his wonderful and at times bewildering facts In a bright and 
cheery spirit that makes the book doubly attractive," — Boston Home JournaU 

'HE STORY OF ''PRIMITIVE'' MAN, By 

Edward Clodd, author of " The Story of Creation," etc. 

**No candid person will deny that Mr. Clodd has come as near as any one at this 
time is likely to come to an authentic exposition of all the information hitherto gained 
regarding the earlier stages in the evolution of mankind." — New York Sun. 

'HE STORY OF THE PLANTS. By Grant 

Allen, author of " Flowers and their Pedigrees," etc. 

"As fascinating in style as a first-class story of fiction, and is a simple and clear 
exposition of plant life." — Boston Home yournal. 

"ITHE STORY OF THE EARTH By H. G. 
J. Seeley, F. R. S., Professor of Geography in King's College, 
London. With Illustrations. 

"It is doubtful if the fascinating story of the planet on which we live has been pre- 
viously told so clearly and at the same time so comprehensively." — Boston Advertiser. 

n^HE STORY OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. By 
1 G. F. Chambers, F. R. A. S. 

'* Any Intelligent reader can get clear ideas of the movements of the worlds about us. 
. . . Will impart a wise knowledge of astronomical wonders.' — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

'HE STORY OF A PIECE OF COAL. By E. 
A. Martin, F. G. S. 



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'* The value and importance of this volume are out of all proportion to its size and 
outward appearance." — Chicago Record. 

^HE STORY OF ELECTRICITY. By John 
I Munro, C. E. 

*' The book is an excellent one, crammed full of facts, and deserves a place not 
alone on the desk of the student, but on the workbench of the practical electrician." — = 
New York Times. 



T 



'HE STORY OF EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS 

OF THE EAST. By Robert Anderson, M..A., F. A. S., 
author of " Early England," " The Stuart Period," etc. 



New York • D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 



A 



